• takes a single value (1,2,4,8 bytes), treats as sequence of bits
• and a small positive integer x
• moves (shifts) each bit x positions to the right
• right-end bit vanishes; left-end bit replaced by zero**
• result contains same number of bits as input

  00100111 >> 2      00100111 >> 8
  --------           --------
  00001001           00000000

** if signed quantity, sign bit replaces left-end bit