Bitwise operators work on the individual binary digits (bits) of integers rather than on their overall values. They only accept integers, including Booleans, which are integers; using them on floats raises TypeError. You will meet them in low-level work such as flags, permissions and network masks, and the exam checks that you can compute them by hand. Think of each number as a row of switches, and each operator as a rule for combining the switches column by column.
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