Explain how bit manipulation is used in low-level programming and system optimization.

Bit manipulation is the direct manipulation of individual bits within machine words and is fundamental to low-level programming because hardware exposes data and control through binary representations. It enables efficient operations such as setting flags, packing data, masking values, controlling hardware registers, and implementing performance-critical algorithms. The trade-off is that bit-level code can improve speed, memory usage, and cache efficiency while reducing readability and increasing the risk of portability bugs.

At the lowest level, computers store and process data as sequences of bits. Bit manipulation allows software to operate directly on these binary representations rather than treating values only as abstract integers, structures, or objects.

Common bitwise operators include:

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