Power Pivot Principles: The A to Z of DAX Functions – BITRSHIFT

In our long-established Power Pivot Principles articles, we continue our series on the A to Z of Data Analysis eXpression (DAX) functions. This week, we look at BITRSHIFT.

The BITRSHIFT function

It’s time to find the antidote to the recent BITLSHIFT function and you shouldn’t feel bitter (BITR?).  This function first converts the number to binary and then removes a specified number of digits from the right of the binary number, i.e. this function returns a number shifted right by the specified number of bits.

The BITRSHIFT function employs the following syntax to operate:

The BITRSHIFT function has the following arguments:

• number: this is required and is any DAX expression that returns an integer value
• shift_amount: also required.  This too is a DAX expression that must be an integer.

It should be further noted that:

• shifting a number right is equivalent to removing digits from the rightmost side of the binary representation of the number.  For example, a two-bit shift to the right on the decimal value 13 converts its binary value (1101) to 11, or 3 in decimal
• if the absolute value of shift_amount is greater than 64, BITRSHIFT will not return an error, but it will result in an underflow / overflow
• a negative number used as the shift_amount argument shifts the number of bits to the left
• a negative number used as the shift_amount argument returns the same result as a positive shift_amount argument for the BITLSHIFT function.

Please see my example below:

In binary, since 16 is 10000 in binary, BITRSHIFT will modify this to 10 in binary, which is 2 in decimal.

Come back next week for our next post on Power Pivot in the Blog section. In the meantime, please remember we have training in Power Pivot which you can find out more about here. If you wish to catch up on past articles in the meantime, you can find all of our Past Power Pivot blogs here.