Test your knowledge with free interactive questions on Seneca — used by over 10 million students.

Binary Shifts

A binary shift is a technique for performing multiplication or division on a binary number.

Binary shift

Binary shift

  • In a binary shift, each digit is moved one column to the left or the right.
  • Extra 0 bits are added to the start or end of the binary number to fill any missing spaces.
Left binary shift

Left binary shift

  • In a left binary shift, each digit is moved one place to the left.
    • This has the effect of multiplying the number by two.
  • You must take care, when performing a left shift, that there is no overflow error (where we run out of space to store the last digit of the number).
Right binary shift

Right binary shift

  • In a right binary shift, each digit is moved one place to the right.
    • This has the effect of dividing the number by two.
  • You must take care when performing a right shift that no data is shifted off the right hand side. This can cause a loss of accuracy.
Jump to other topics
1

Components of a Computer

2

Software & Software Development

3

Exchanging Data

4

Data Types, Data Structures & Algorithms

5

Legal, Moral, Cultural & Ethical Issues

6

Elements of Computational Thinking

6.1

Thinking Abstractly

6.2

Thinking Ahead

6.3

Thinking Procedurally

6.4

Thinking Logically

6.5

Thinking Concurrently

7

Problem Solving & Programming

8

Algorithms

Practice questions on Binary Shifts

Can you answer these? Test yourself with free interactive practice on Seneca — used by over 10 million students.

  1. 1
  2. 2
Answer all questions on Binary Shifts

Unlock your full potential with Seneca Premium

  • Unlimited access to 10,000+ open-ended exam questions

  • Mini-mock exams based on your study history

  • Unlock 800+ premium courses & e-books

Get started with Seneca Premium