bitwise shift?

[Michael Hoffman]

Jean-Paul Calderone wrote:
> On Wed, 25 Apr 2007 22:54:12 +0200, desktop <fff at sss.com> wrote:
>> I have found a code example with this loop.
>>
>> for k in range(10, 25):
>>       n = 1 << k;
>>
>>
>> I have never read Python before but is it correct that 1 get multiplied
>> with the numbers 10,11,12,12,...,25 assuming that 1 << k means "1 shift
>> left by k" which is the same as multiplying with k.
> 
> No.
> 
> http://python.org/doc/ref/shifting.html

"A right shift by n bits is defined as division by pow(2,n). A left 
shift by n bits is defined as multiplication with pow(2,n); for plain 
integers there is no overflow check so in that case the operation drops 
bits and flips the sign if the result is not less than pow(2,31) in 
absolute value. Negative shift counts raise a ValueError exception."

 >>> sys.maxint << 2
8589934588L
 >>> 2**31
2147483648L

It looks like the limitation has been removed. This might be a nice 
optimization as well, as 1 << n is faster than 2**n for large enough n. 
Might be rare, although I have a friend who has been doing this all day. 
In Python.
-- 
Michael Hoffman