What is bitwise?

[jakeembx]

Hi all, could anyone explain to me what bitwise is please? I have no idea what it is and I have searched online about it but can't find anything about it and I'm struggling to do the ALU part of the course without it! Thank you :)

[cadet1620]

Bit-wise means one bit at a time. For example, bit-wise And means that each bit position in the operands is treated independently, i.e., like the And16 you built in chapter 1.

--Mark

[jakeembx]

Thank you for your reply, I understand it a bit better now. I know it may be a silly question but why it is used?, I don't understand why

[ybakos]

A basic case is for boolean logic. Other cases include bitmasks and a variety of other "clever" use cases. Can you look online to discover more?

[ybakos]

In other words, bitwise negation is logical negation (!) while arithmetic negation is, well, arithmetic negation (-).

[jakeembx]

thank you for replying! I don't get the difference between normal AND and bitwise AND?

[ybakos]

For Hack, you can think of them as being the same.