How do I use the shift right “>>” operator?

The signed shift right operator >> shifts a bit pattern to the right. 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 1000 bit pattern using the >> operator 2 position will produce a 0010 bit pattern. The signed shift right operator produce a result that equals to dividing a number by 2.

package org.kodejava.basic;

public class SignedRightShiftOperator {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        // The binary representation of 32 is
        // "00000000000000000000000000100000"
        int number = 32;
        System.out.println("number       = " + number);
        System.out.println("binary       = " +
                Integer.toBinaryString(number));

        // Using the shift right operator we shift the bits
        // four times to the right which resulting the result
        // of "00000000000000000000000000000010"
        int shiftedRight = number >> 4;
        System.out.println("shiftedRight = " + shiftedRight);
        System.out.println("binary       = " +
                Integer.toBinaryString(shiftedRight));
    }
}

The result of the code snippet:

number       = 32
binary       = 100000
shiftedRight = 2
binary       = 10