Why doesn't C have rotate left/right operators?
- by icepack
A bit of a philosophical question, I suppose. Hope it belongs here.
C language has the standard set of bit-wise operations, including OR, AND, XOR, SHIFT LEFT/RIGHT, NOT. Anyone has an idea why rotate left/rotate right isn't included in the language? These operators are of the same complexity as other bit-wise operators and normally require a single assembly instruction, like the others. Besides, I can think of a lot of uses for rotate operator, probably not less than, say, xor operator - so it sounds a bit strange to me that they aren't included in C along with the rest.
Edit:
Please stop suggesting implementations of rotation operators. I know how to do that and it's not what the question about.