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Bitwise NOT

The NOT bitwise operation inverts bits. A 0 becomes a 1. A 1 becomes a 0.

The NOT operator is often written as a tilde character ("~"):

~ 0000 0101 = 1111 1010

When numbers are printed in base-10, the result of a NOT operation can be surprising. In particular, positive numbers can become negative and negative numbers can become positive. For example:

~ 5 // gives -6 // At the bit level: // ~ 0000 0101 (5) // = 1111 1010 (-6)

This is because numbers are (usually) represented using two's complement, where the leftmost bit is actually negative. So flipping the leftmost bit usually flips the sign of the number.

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