The bitwise AND (&) operator returns a number or BigInt whose binary representation has a 1 in each bit position for which the corresponding bits of both operands are 1.
The bitwise AND (&) operator returns a number or BigInt whose binary representation has a 1 in each bit position for which the corresponding bits of both operands are 1.
const a = 5; / 00000000000000000000000000000101
const b = 3; / 00000000000000000000000000000011
console.log(a & b); / 00000000000000000000000000000001
/ Expected output: 1
x & y
The & operator is overloaded for two types of operands: number and TypeError is thrown if one operand becomes a BigInt but the other becomes a number.
The operator operates on the operands' bit representations in two's complement. Each bit in the first operand is paired with the corresponding bit in the second operand: first bit to first bit, second bit to second bit, and so on. The operator is applied to each pair of bits, and the result is constructed bitwise.
The truth table for the AND operation is:
| x | y | x AND y |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | 0 | |
| 0 | 1 | 0 |
| 1 | 0 | |
| 1 | 1 |
9 (base 10) = 00000000000000000000000000001001 (base 2)
14 (base 10) = 00000000000000000000000000001110 (base 2)
--------------------------------
14 & 9 (base 10) = 00000000000000000000000000001000 (base 2) = 8 (base 10)
Numbers with more than 32 bits get their most significant bits discarded. For example, the following integer with more than 32 bits will be converted to a 32-bit integer:
Before: 11100110111110100000000000000110000000000001 After: 10100000000000000110000000000001
Warning:
You may see people using & -1 to truncate numbers to integers. Bitwise ANDing any number x with -1 returns x converted to a 32-bit integer, which additionally removes leading bits for numbers outside the range -2147483648 to 2147483647. Use Math.trunc() instead.
For BigInts, there's no truncation. Conceptually, understand positive BigInts as having an infinite number of leading 0 bits, and negative BigInts having an infinite number of leading 1 bits.
/ 9 (00000000000000000000000000001001)
/ 14 (00000000000000000000000000001110)
14 & 9;
/ 8 (00000000000000000000000000001000)
14n & 9n; / 8n
| Specification |
|---|
| ECMAScript® 2026 Language Specification # prod-BitwiseANDExpression |