Bitwise Complement (~)

The bitwise complement operator (~) sets all 1 bits in its operand to 0 in the result and sets all 0 bits to 1 in the result—otherwise referred to as “taking the one’s complement of the value.” In Fig. 20.8, line 40 assigns variable number1 the value 21845 (00000000 00000000 01010101 01010101). When the expression ~number1 evaluates, the result is (11111111 11111111 10101010 10101010).