Shift operators are another type of Binary operator. They take two integer operands and left shift or right shift the bits by the number specified.

The following table lists the available shift operators:

In the following example, the program accepts an integer operand and shifts left or right by 1 bit. Shift works on Binary operators, so, for our understanding, I wrote a method that will convert an integer into Binary format and display it. When we pass an integer number of 9 to the program, i, and use the >> operator, its Binary string is shifted by 1 and the result is displayed. When 1001 is right-shifted, it becomes 100:

public static string IntToBinaryString(int number)
{
    const int mask = 1;
    var binary = string.Empty;
    while (number > 0)
    {
        // Logical AND the number and prepend it to the result string
        binary = (number & mask) + binary;
        number = number >> 1;
    }
    return binary;
}

// '>>' Operator
Console.WriteLine("'>>' operator");
int number = 9;
Console.WriteLine("Number is : {0} and binary form is {1}:", number, IntToBinaryString(number));
number = number >> 1;
Console.WriteLine("Number is : {0} and binary form is {1}:", number, IntToBinaryString(number));

//Output: 
//Number is : 9 and binary form is 1001
//Number is : 4 and binary form is 100

// '<<' Operator
Console.WriteLine("'<<' operator");
Console.WriteLine("Number is : {0} and binary form is {1}:", number, IntToBinaryString(number));
number = number << 1;
Console.WriteLine("Number is : {0} and binary form is {1}:", number, IntToBinaryString(number));

//Output: 
//Number is : 4 and binary form is 100
//Number is : 8 and binary form is 1000