When should I use a bitwise operator?

Question

I read the following Stack Overflow questions, and I understand the differences between bitwise and logical.

• Difference between & and && in PHP

• Reference - What does this symbol mean in PHP?

However, none of them explains when I should use bitwise or logical.

When should I use bitwise operators rather than logical ones and vice versa?

In which situation do I need to compare bit by bit?

I am not asking about the differences, but I am asking the situation when you need to use bitwise operators.

Answer 1

Bitwise | and & and logical || and && are totally different.

Bitwise operators perform operations on the bits of two numbers and return the result. That means it's not a yes or no thing. If they're being used in conditional statements, they're often used as part of logical comparisons. For example:

if ($x & 2 == 2) {
    // The 2^1 bit is set in the number $x
}

Logical operators compare two (or more) conditions/expressions and return true or false. You use them most commonly in conditional statements, like if and while. For example:

if ($either_this || $or_this) {
    // Either expression was true
}

Answer 2

Bitwise is useful for things in PHP just like anything else.

How about a value that can have multiple states turned on at the same time?

<?php

// since we're setting constant values in base10 we must progressively double
// them since bitwise operations work in base2. you'll see why when we output
// these as binary values below.
const STATE_FOO = 1;
const STATE_BAR = 2;
const STATE_FEZ = 4;
const STATE_BAZ = 8;

// show base2 values of the above constants
echo sprintf("STATE_FOO's base2 value is %08d\n", decbin(STATE_FOO));
echo sprintf("STATE_BAR's base2 value is %08d\n", decbin(STATE_BAR));
echo sprintf("STATE_FEZ's base2 value is %08d\n", decbin(STATE_FEZ));
echo sprintf("STATE_BAZ's base2 value is %08d\n\n", decbin(STATE_BAZ));

// set state to FOO and FEZ
$state = STATE_FOO | STATE_FEZ;

echo sprintf("base10 value of \$state is %s\n", $state);
echo sprintf("base2 value of \$state is %08d\n", decbin($state));
echo sprintf("Does \$state include FOO state? %s\n", (bool)($state & STATE_FOO));
echo sprintf("Does \$state include BAR state? %s\n", (bool)($state & STATE_BAR));
echo sprintf("Does \$state include FEZ state? %s\n", (bool)($state & STATE_FEZ));
echo sprintf("Does \$state include BAZ state? %s\n", (bool)($state & STATE_BAZ));
echo sprintf("Is state equivalent to FOO and FEZ states? %s\n", ($state == (STATE_FOO | STATE_FEZ)));

Output:

STATE_FOO's base2 value is 00000001
STATE_BAR's base2 value is 00000010
STATE_FEZ's base2 value is 00000100
STATE_BAZ's base2 value is 00001000

base10 value of $state is 5
base2 value of $state is 00000101
Does $state include FOO state? 1
Does $state include BAR state?
Does $state include FEZ state? 1
Does $state include BAZ state?
Is state equivalent to FOO and FEZ states? 1

Answer 3

Forget what is already in your head.

OK, now say you have some different roles: admin, user, and guest.

and some different permissions: read, write and delete

Let's create some bitmasks for permissions and roles. A bitmask is a sequence of bits that can be used to manipulate or read some kind of flags. As shown below:

// flags                                bitmasks
$read = 1;                              // 0001
$write = 2;                             // 0010
$delete = 4;                            // 0100

$admin = $read | $write | $delete;      // 0001 | 0010 | 0100 => 0111
$user = $read | $write;                 // 0001 | 0010 => 0011 
$guest = $read;                         // 0001 => 0001

Notice 1, 2, 4. This must be raised as double. Otherwise, it might give you some awkward results.

Forget about the things commented. Those are just sequence of bits (or bitmasks) for individual permissions and roles.

Now let's create a handy function which may be used to check a specific permission for a specific role.

function isAllowed($role, $permissison) {
    return $role & $permissison ? true : false;
}

We are done. Let's check the $delete permission for all 3 roles:

var_dump(isAllowed($admin, $delete));  // bool(true)
var_dump(isAllowed($user, $delete));   // bool(false)
var_dump(isAllowed($guest, $delete));  // bool(false)

So why is bitwise operation? In a word, bitwise operation is more faster, concise and maintainable. Otherwise, using bitwise operation is always efficient for complex applications.

Answer 4

Bitwise operators are specifically used in case of binary value representation.

echo '0110011010' & '0101001001'; 
//0100001000

Logical operators are most preferred for comparison and are a bit faster than bitwise operator in case of AND and XOR operations.

if(func1() && func2())

if func1() returns false it won't bother calling func2()

if(func1() & func2())

Will call both functions regardless of their returned values.

Answer 5

In most cases, you'll probably want to use logical operators. They're used for combining logical conditions, generally to control program flow, e.g. ($isAlive && $wantsToEat).

Bitwise operators are used when you want to perform operations on a bit-by-bit basis on the underlying binary representations of integers. e.g. (5 & 3) == 7. As others have suggested, there's usually not a lot of call for this in the sort of application that tends to get written in PHP (although there is in lower-level languages, like C).

Answer 6

Bitwise operators are useful when manipulating the bits of a number. Look here. Otherwise you should use the logical operators. Also the logical operators are short-circuited. For example, if you have a && b and a is false, b is not evaluated.

Disclaimer: I am coming from a Java background, but I guess in PHP it is the same.

Answer 7

They are two very different operators.

When you want two conditions to simultaneously be true, you use the logical &&. For example, I want to print out "happy birthday" only if the person's birthday is today && they have money in the account. This is used whenever we want to perform composition of two or more conditions, mostly in if statements and loop conditions (although not exclusively).

When you want to perform bitwise operations (which in day-to-day PHP programming is much more rare), you use the bitwise &. This is far more rare, and you might be performing bitwise masking (I doubt it though), so you might only want a result that both integers represent, in which case you can say newAttribute = attribute1 & attribute2;.

Answer 8

Well, asuming there is $x = (false && some_function());, here the value of $x will be set without calling the some_function() because the first value was FALSE.

But what if you needed to call that function anyway? Use $x = (false & some_function());.

In other words, the & uses MORE processing than the &&, just because && does not run through all the values to check them. If it found one value as false, it would return it, not looking at other values.

And in logical operations, use the && operator as it's used to return the logical operation value, where & is used to set a value and in an if statement it will always return true.

Answer 9

If you want to know more how it works check out this site:

http://www.bitwiseoperatorcalculator.com/

Coming from PHP, I have never used it before but just reading for fun this site gives simple explanations!