Implement bit-wise traits?

[jbaiter]

I'm currently trying to implement a few bit-parallel algorithms in Rust that I planned to use the BitVec type for. I frequently have to use bit-wise operations (|,&,^,<<,>>) on the bit vectors and was a bit disappointed that only &, | and ^ are supported, and that only as in-place operations via union, difference and intersection. Shifting is currently not supported at all.

Is there a specific reason why the bit-wise traits for these operations from std::ops (BitAnd, Shl, etc) are not implemented for this type? If not, would there be interest in a PR that implements them?

[Gankra]

I'm not fundamentally opposed, but they seem like terribly expensive things to do by-value. What's your use-case look like? Are you sure you want to be making that many allocations?

[vcque]

Hi !

I second the need of shift operations. A use case would be : if a bitvec represents possible moves on a board, >> 1 would represent the set of adjacent moves.

About the allocation, I think implementing the assign operations shl_assign, shr_assign do not incur additional allocations. Would it be better to implement shift that way ?