The operation value = value / 2 is equivalent to value = value >> 1. True or False?

• A. False
• B. True
• C. Cannot determine
• D. Depends on type

Answer: (B)

Shifting right by one bit halves the value, dropping the least significant bit. Integer division by 2 does the same thing: it divides and discards any remainder. For non-negative values (or unsigned types), these two operations produce the same result, so value = value / 2 is equivalent to value = value >> 1. This is a common optimization in low-level code to speed up division by two.

Be aware that with negative numbers and certain language rules, right shifts on signed integers can behave differently from division, since some implementations use arithmetic shifts for negatives while division truncates toward zero. In those cases, the results might not match.