The use of >> and << in python?

Question

What exactly do these symbols mean? What would the output be of 7 >> 2 be compared to 7 >> 2 << 4? How does it work exactly? Are there other types of examples that use characters instead of integers?

Answer 1

off hand I don't know, other than maybe just "greater than/less than".

However it annoys me on coding tutorial websites how they copy paste their text from the default ide:
>>>>print("this is annoying")
Since when you're trying to copy paste code from it, it'll mess up your code.

if no one answers this just look it up

Answer 2

https://wiki.python.org/moin/BitwiseOperators

something about shifting bits? I dunno. gl

Answer 3

Ahh! I think I understand.

So basically Bitwise Operators work in binary. These specific Operators, << and >>, shift the binary code left or right respectively.

To give an example with the numbers I gave, 7 = 0111, >> = shift to the right, and 2 is how many times i want to shift right. The result would be moving from 0111 to 0011 to 0001 (because i am moving 2 times), which gives you the output equaling 1. To clarify, with each move to the right, I am throwing away the information at one end of the binary code and adding zeros to the other end.

If we were to replace the 2 with a 1, ie 7 >> 1, the resulting output would be 4 (0011).

If we were to replace >> with <<, ie 7 << 2, the resulting output would be 28 (0001 1100).

If we were to try my other example 7 >> 2 << 4, the resulting output would be 16 (0001 0000). To go a little further into detail with this one we are basically just moving right twice, giving us 1, and then with that 1 we are moving 4 times to the left, giving us 16.

There are a couple problems in the challenges that use these two (<<, >>), so hopefully this helps explain them a bit!