I start working with the termcaps and i saw this kind of operation.
term.c_lflag &= ~(ICANON);
I know &=
is a binary AND
, and i am not very confortable with it.
Why didn't simply use =
or make a #define
, and what the &= ~
do ?
Assuming ICANON
is a bit-mask, i.e. an integer with bits set to represent some feature, that statement will make sure those bits are not set in c_lflag
.
This is often called "masking off" those bits.
The operation is a bitwise AND with the bitwise inverse (~
is bitwise inverse).
So, if the value of c_lflag
is 3 (binary 112) before the operation, and ICANON
has the value 2 (binary 102), it will become 1 since it's bitwise-AND:ed with the value ~2
which has all bits set except bit number 1 (binary ...111012).
It could also be written more verbosely as
term.c_lflag = term.c_lflag & ~ICANON;
The parentheses around ICANON
should not be needed.