Bit Shifting in VB.NET

Here's a good tidbit of info from Scott Hanselman: "Machine.Shift.Left and Bit Shifting in VB.NET"

Haven't used bit shifting in a long while, but this info is pretty cool and goes back to BASICs...

(Thanks, Scott for the refresher on how to use VB! And yes, VB can be a bit too high level for some intense operations. Isn't that why MS created VS Studio?)

Here's a bit of code from NNTP:

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Function SafeLeftShift(ShiftThis As Integer, ShiftPlaces As Integer) As Integer Dim ShiftThisPrivate As Integer ' Private copy with extraneous bits unset Dim SignBitMask As Integer ' Mask for fixing msb ' Unset leftmost bits that will be discarded ShiftThisPrivate = ShiftThis And ((2 ^ (15 - ShiftPlaces)) - 1) ' Determine whether the sign bit should ' be set in the bit-shifted result If ShiftThis And (2 ^ (15 - ShiftPlaces)) Then SignBitMask = &H8000 End If ' Do the bit shift. SafeLeftShift = (ShiftThisPrivate * (2 ^ ShiftPlaces)) Or SignBitMask End Function