In
telecommunication, an
arithmetic shift is a shift, applied to the representation of a number in a fixed
radix numeration system and in a
fixed-point representation system, and in which only the characters representing the fixed-point part of the number are moved. An arithmetic shift is usually equivalent to multiplying the number by a positive or a negative integral power of the radix, except for the effect of any rounding; compare the
logical shift[?] with the arithmetic shift, especially in the case of
floating-point representation.
Source: from Federal Standard 1037C
All Wikipedia text
is available under the
terms of the GNU Free Documentation License