Python, like most other programming languages, has special operators for performing bitwise operations on data. A bitwise operation is an operation that is applied to individual bits of some object.

Who would use it? Anyone wanting to perform bitwise operations, such as bitwise and, or, not, and xor, or bitshift operations for binary data. Why should this be added? This would help fill out ...

def to_binary(n, bits=8): """Convert integer to binary string with fixed bits and two's complement for negatives.""" ...