Left shift (<<)

The << operator is overloaded for two types of operands: number and BigInt. For numbers, the operator returns a 32-bit integer. For BigInts, the operator returns a BigInt. It first coerces both operands to numeric values and tests the types of them. It performs BigInt left shift if both operands become BigInts; otherwise, it converts both operands to 32-bit integers and performs number left shift. A TypeError is thrown if one operand becomes a BigInt but the other becomes a number.

The operator operates on the left operand's bit representation in two's complement. For example, 9 << 2 yields 36:

     9 (base 10): 00000000000000000000000000001001 (base 2)
                  --------------------------------
9 << 2 (base 10): 00000000000000000000000000100100 (base 2) = 36 (base 10)

Bitwise a 32-bit integer x to the left by y bits yields x * 2 ** y. So for example, 9 << 3 is equivalent to 9 * (2 ** 3) = 9 * (8) = 72.

If the left operand is a number with more than 32 bits, it will get the most significant bits discarded. For example, the following integer with more than 32 bits will be converted to a 32-bit integer:

Before: 11100110111110100000000000000110000000000001
After:              10100000000000000110000000000001

The right operand will be converted to an unsigned 32-bit integer and then taken modulo 32, so the actual shift offset will always be a positive integer between 0 and 31, inclusive. For example, 100 << 32 is the same as 100 << 0 (and produces 100) because 32 modulo 32 is 0.

For BigInts, there's no truncation. Conceptually, understand positive BigInts as having an infinite number of leading 0 bits, and negative BigInts having an infinite number of leading 1 bits.

Left shifting any number x by 0 returns x converted to a 32-bit integer. Do not use << 0 to truncate numbers to integers; use Math.trunc() instead.

• Bitwise operators in the JS guide
• Left shift assignment (<<=)