How do I use the shift left “

The signed shift left operator << shifts a bit pattern to the left. This operator operates with two operand, the left-hand operand to be shifted and the right-hand operand tells how much position to shift.

Shifting a 0010 bit pattern using the << operator 2 position will produce a 1000 bit pattern. The signed shift left operator produce a result that equals to multiplying a number by 2, which double the value of a number.

package org.kodejava.basic;

public class SignedLeftShiftOperator {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        // The binary representation of 2 is "0010"
        int number = 2;
        System.out.println("number      = " + number);
        System.out.println("binary      = " +
                Integer.toBinaryString(number));

        // Using the shift left operator we shift the bits two
        // times to the left. This will shift the "0010" into
        // "1000"
        int shiftedLeft = number << 2;
        System.out.println("shiftedLeft = " + shiftedLeft);
        System.out.println("binary      = " +
                Integer.toBinaryString(shiftedLeft));
    }
}

The result of the code snippet:

number      = 2
binary      = 10
shiftedLeft = 8
binary      = 1000