What is the tilde (~) in the enum definition?
c#, enumeration, enums, language-features
Solution
~ is the unary one's complement operator -- it flips the bits of its operand.
~0 = 0xFFFFFFFF = -1
in two's complement arithmetic, `~x == -x-1`
the ~ operator can be found in pretty much any language that borrowed syntax from C, including Objective-C/C++/C#/Java/Javascript.
Problem
I'm always surprised that even after using C# for all this time now, I still manage to find things I didn't know about... I've tried searching the internet for this, but using the "~" in a search isn't working for me so well and I didn't find anything on MSDN either (not to say it isn't there) I saw this snippet of code recently, what does the tilde(~) mean? ``` /// <summary> /// Enumerates the ways a customer may purchase goods. /// </summary> [Flags] public enum PurchaseMethod { All = ~0, None = 0, Cash = 1, Check = 2, CreditCard = 4 } ``` I was a little surprised to see it so I tried to compile it, and it worked... but I still don't know what it means/does. Any help??