DC>> http://lua-users.org/wiki/BitwiseOperators eg> that is, but the question is why standard Lua does not contain eg> bitwise operations? is there any reason? You can apply patch http://lua-users.org/files/wiki_insecure/power_patches/5.1/newluaoperators.patch to add bitwise operators to lua core. See http://lua-users.org/wiki/LuaPowerPatches for details.