Talk:Logical shift

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Renaming

I think the article name, "logical shift", is a bit of a misnomer. In programming languages, logical operators (such as AND, OR, etc) are often divided into "logical" (operators that operate on the entire value, eg, && and || in C) and "bitwise" (operators that operate on each bit of the value, eg, & and |). In this context, a "logical shift" wouldn't make any sense as it obviously operates on the bit-level. Thus, I propose the new name of "bitwise shift". If noone complains, I will eventually rename it. -- intgr 04:11, 13 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Regardless of whether the name is sensible from the perspective of higher-level languages, it is the name used throughtout Computer Science when talking about the assembly/machine code instructions, in contrast with the arithmetic shift which propagates the sign bit. --Safalra 20:42, 7 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Expansion: bitwise rotation

Also, the article should be expanded to include the concept of bitwise rotations. Rotations are often used in cryptography where no data can be lost but where the function is a very simple way to achieve diffusion. -- intgr 04:11, 13 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This is discussed (briefly) in the Circular shift article (although the operation is generally called a rotation when writing about assembly/machine code). --Safalra 20:45, 7 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]