> ... this explicitly relies on shifting something into the sign bit, which depending on the exact flavor of language standard you’re using is either not allowe

> ... this explicitly relies on shifting something into the sign bit, which depending on the exact flavor of language standard you’re using is either not allowed or at best fairly recently .. An unsigned has no sign bit, so the left shift just needs to be unsigned to make it "technically correct". (Remember to not use smaller than int types though, due to integer promotion issues)