<P> Bitwise operations are contrasted by byte - level operations which characterize the bitwise operators ' logical counterparts , the AND , OR and NOT operators . Instead of performing on individual bits , byte - level operators perform on strings of eight bits ( known as bytes ) at a time . The reason for this is that a byte is normally the smallest unit of addressable memory ( i.e. data with a unique memory address . ) </P>
in general when performing bit-wise operations in c which data type should you use
strings of eight bits ( known as bytes )