Bitwise operators in Azure Cosmos DB for NoSQL

  • Article
  • 09/14/2024

APPLIES TO: NoSQL

This article details the bitwise operators supported by Azure Cosmos DB. Bitwise operators are useful for constructing JSON result-sets on the fly. The bitwise operators work similarly to higher-level programming languages like C# and JavaScript. For examples of C# bitwise operators, see Bitwise and shift operators.

Understanding bitwise operations

The following table shows the explanations and examples of bitwise operations in the API for NoSQL between two values.

Operation Operator Description
Left shift << Shift left-hand value left by the specified number of bits.
Right shift >> Shift left-hand value right by the specified number of bits.
Zero-fill (unsigned) right shift >>> Shift left-hand value right by the specified number of bits without filling left-most bits.
AND & Computes bitwise logical AND.
OR | Computes bitwise logical OR.
XOR ^ Computes bitwise logical exclusive OR.

For example, the following query uses each of the bitwise operators and renders a result.

SELECT 
    (100 >> 2) AS rightShift,
    (100 << 2) AS leftShift,
    (100 >>> 0) AS zeroFillRightShift,
    (100 & 1000) AS logicalAnd,
    (100 | 1000) AS logicalOr,
    (100 ^ 1000) AS logicalExclusiveOr

The example query's results as a JSON object.

[
  {
    "rightShift": 25,
    "leftShift": 400,
    "zeroFillRightShift": 100,
    "logicalAnd": 96,
    "logicalOr": 1004,
    "logicalExclusiveOr": 908
  }
]

Important

The bitwise operators in Azure Cosmos DB for NoSQL follow the same behavior as bitwise operators in JavaScript. JavaScript stores numbers as 64 bits floating point numbers, but all bitwise operations are performed on 32 bits binary numbers. Before a bitwise operation is performed, JavaScript converts numbers to 32 bits signed integers. After the bitwise operation is performed, the result is converted back to 64 bits JavaScript numbers. For more information about the bitwise operators in JavaScript, see JavaScript binary bitwise operators at MDN Web Docs.

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