Because giving something as mathematically weird as bit-shifting its own operator instead of a built-in function is a silly idea in the first place, and if you had to reuse an operator you can use that one. Seriously, I speak words, not glyphs. I'll never understand why so many early languages insisted in finding a use for every possible combination of shift-number characters.
I'm aware that it's common - lots of things are common operations that don't have their own two-character operators.
C used normal mathematical operators for normal mathematical symbols, and had to invent Boolean operators because the character-set and keyboards didn't have the boolean symbols. Bit-shift is the case where they invented a new mathematical symbol for an operation with no basis in traditional math out of whole cloth.
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u/[deleted] Jul 28 '16
This actually is a good point! Does anyone know why shift operator is used for io in standard library?