Binary is simple and very useful to know
essentially all it is, is machine code being either 1 (on) or 0 (off) most basic form of computer language.
now when you talk about this in terms of computers a single binary digit is known as a BIT.
for your modern x86 (PC-CD) computer your processor is capable of handling 4-8-16-32 bit binary strings.
Although Binary String mean little to the adverage coder, thier sizes/uses were given a more descriptive name for use in the higher language suchas DarkBasic...
4Bit - commonly called a Poke
8Bit - Byte
16Bit - Word
32Bit - Double Word (Dword)
As the Bits = the number of Binary Digits, and each Binary Digit has 2 values (as was covered earlier) we can assume that the max value possible would be 2*BITS - the problem here being is that BITs are seperate from each other which means that 4bit rather than being 2*4 actually ends up being 2*2*2*2 ...
reason being that unlike Decimal math your used to where you have a set value per bit, binary is incremental kinda like a combination lock so really rather than trying to find out the max value your trying to find out the Max possible combinations.
again until Decimal math you always count 0 which means that the max value is 2^BITS-1
using this we can then determine the following
2^8BIT-1 = 255
now we have 256 combinations we can use to represent something, and this is exactly how ASCII text works.
If you open up your DarkBASIC Pro and look in the help file under the Principals of programmer and look at ASCII Characters (as there is a complete list there)... you'll see what the values are which are used to represent the characters on your screen.
The actual character change depending on your language, but usually your Operating System is based on your character binary - ASCII/ANSI is the best example because it is the Latin based language sets (American devised)
perhaps someone else ca go over howto use the operators as i don't have a grand amount of time right now
<< - Left
>> - Right
|| - Xor
.. - Or
&& - And
~~ - Xand or Xnot i can't remember
+ - Addition
- - Subtract
/ - Division
* - Multiply
% - Modular
^ - Exponencial
!! - Not