[Haskell-cafe] Please explain behavior of setBit

13 Nov 2005

      Here is my trivial program: 

import Bits

main = putStr (show(bit 0::Int)++"  "++show (mybit 0))

mybit:: Int -> Int
mybit x = setBit (bit 0) x

The output (with GHC-5) is 

1  1

My question: Why is (bit 0) equal to 1 and not 0? That first bit is set
regardless of the value of x (I have tried several), although in each
case, the bit I expect to be set is also set (e.g., mybit 4 yields 17). 

Thanks in advance for assistance. 

Murray Gross