I'm having an issue shifting bits and I cannot seem to understand what is going on. I'm able to shift bits to the left perfectly fine but I am unable to shift bits to the right. Here's a look at what is going on:
Shifting to the right (works as intended):
// bits is a char that = 00011000
// Shift the bits to the left
bits = bits << 3;
// Print the bits
std::bitset<8> x(bits);
std::cout << "Shifted Bits: " << x << std::endl;
This produces the expected output of 11000000 as '00011000' has been shifted to the left 3 bits.
It looks like 1's are added instead of 0s when I attempt to shift to the right, however:
// bits = 11000000 from the previous operation
// Shift the bits to the right
bits = bits >> 5;
// Print the bits
std::bitset<8> y(bits);
std::cout << "Shifted (right) bits: " << y << std::endl;
This produces the unexpected output of 11111110 when the expected output was '00000110' as I was attempting to shift '11000000' 5 places to the right.
Is there an explanation/reason for why the shift operator is adding 0s to the new spaces when I shift to the left but then adding 1s to the new spaces when I shift to the right?
Thanks!
EDIT:
I figured out what was going on. I was extracting bits from an array of DDS_Octets but I was using a char for the bits variable. It looked like this:
DDS_Octet* buffer_ = new DDS_Octet(BUFFSIZE);
fill_buffer(buffer_);
// Here is where the issue is
// I am implicitly casting a DDS_Octet to a char which is a no-no
char bits = buffer_[0];
// The code above now happens here
When I made 'bits' the same type as the buffer I no longer had this issue of 1s being added instead of 0's.
I'll leave this here in case someone has the same problem I did and stumbles upon this.
