why pipe symbol in python adds to integer?

Question

when I do the following in python shell !

>> print 2 | 4
>> 6

why pipe symbol in python adds to integer ?

Because it's not a pipe : https://docs.python.org/2/library/stdtypes.html#bitwise-operations-on-integer-types — , Nov 02 '15 at 05:10

score 6 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 02 '15 at 05:10

6

It is not a pipe symbol, it is a bitwise OR.

2 in binary:    10
4 in binary:   100
__________________
with or:       110  (1 or 0: 1, 1 or 0: 1, 0 or 0: 0)

And 110 in binary is 6 decimal.

answered Nov 02 '15 at 05:10

daniel451

9,975
16
60
124

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 02 '15 at 05:09

2

It's not addition. It's a bitwise OR. 2 and 4 just happen to be 010 and 100 in binary, so both their sum and their OR is 110 (6).

More info and examples at https://wiki.python.org/moin/BitwiseOperators

answered Nov 02 '15 at 05:09

viraptor

32,414
8
104
182

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Nov 02 '15 at 05:09

1

The pipe symbol stands for bitwise OR in python. Since bin(2) == '0b10', bin(4) == '0b100' and bin(6) = '0b110', you can see that 2 | 4 actually did a bitwise OR.

answered Nov 02 '15 at 05:09

darkryder

762
1
8
23

why pipe symbol in python adds to integer?

3 Answers3