Editing Binary flags (section)

=== Actual use ===

In code you don't have 1b variables, let's suppose you have 8b variables (can store values from 0 to 255). In actual code they're larger, but let's suppose that to make this a bit shorter. Binary operators work on each individual bit so if you have a variable '''d''' defined as 230 (decimal), which is 11100110 (binary) - what would happen if you used binary operators on this and other values?

  var/c = 230 // In binary this is 0b11100110
  
  d = ~c //This inverts each bit, so 0b11100110 becomes 0b00011001 (25 decimal)
  
Okay, so negation is easy enough, but what about if you did the following:

  var/f = 255 // full - this is 0b11111111
  var/e = 0 // empty - this is 0b00000000
  
  v1 = c | f  // In each of the binary operations the bit in v1 = bit in c OR 1. And we know that anything OR 1 = 1. v1 becomes 0b11111111. This is useful for '''SETTING''' bits.
  v2 = c | e  // In each of the binary operations the bit in v2 = bit in c OR 0. We know that anything or 0 remains unchanged. so v2 == c (0b11100110)
  v3 = c & f  // In each of the binary operations the bit in v3 = bit in c AND 1. 1 does not change the outcome in AND operations, so v3 == c (0b11100110)
  v4 = c & e  // In each of the binary operations the bit in v4 = bit in c AND 0. Anything AND 0 = 0, so v4 becomes 0 (0b00000000). This is useful for '''RESETTING''' bits.