Transact-SQL Reference

| (Bitwise OR)

Performs a bitwise logical OR operation between two given integer values as translated to binary expressions within Transact-SQL statements.

Syntax

expression | expression

Arguments

expression

Is any valid Microsoft® SQL Server™ expression of any of the data types of the integer data type category. expression is an integer that is treated and transformed into a binary number for the bitwise operation.

Result Types

Returns an int if the input values are int, a smallint if the input values are smallint, or a tinyint if the input values are tinyint.

Remarks

The bitwise | operator performs a bitwise logical OR between the two expressions, taking each corresponding bit for both expressions. The bits in the result are set to 1 if either or both bits (for the current bit being resolved) in the input expressions have a value of 1; if neither bit in the input expressions is 1, the bit in the result is set to 0.

The | bitwise operator requires two expressions, and it can be used on expressions of only the integer data type category.

If the left and right expressions have different integer data types (for example, the left expression is smallint and the right expression is int), the argument of the smaller data type is converted to the larger data type. In this example, the smallint expression is converted to an int.

Examples

This example creates a table with int data types to show the original values and puts the table into one row.

USE master
GO
IF EXISTS (SELECT * FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES 
      WHERE TABLE_NAME = 'bitwise')
   DROP TABLE bitwise
GO
CREATE TABLE bitwise
( 
 a_int_value int NOT NULL,
b_int_value int NOT NULL
)
GO
INSERT bitwise VALUES (170, 75)
GO

This query performs the bitwise OR on the a_int_value and b_int_value columns.

USE MASTER
GO
SELECT a_int_value | b_int_value
FROM bitwise
GO

Here is the result set:

----------- 
235         

(1 row(s) affected)

The binary representation of 170 (a_int_value or A, below) is 0000 0000 1010 1010. The binary representation of 75 (b_int_value or B, below) is 0000 0000 0100 1011. Performing the bitwise OR operation on these two values produces the binary result 0000 0000 1110 1011, which is decimal 235.