"Bit manipulation can be tricky," writes Nathan, "especially if you have no familiarity with bitwise operators or logic."

"At least, that's what my smarter-than-built-in-language-features colleague must have thought when he authored setBit. Fortunately, his code was the only one that utilized this function, as it doesn't quite work as advertised."

/*
 *    setBit($val, $bit, $switch)
 *
 *    This will switch all the bits specified by $bit to on or 
 *    off in $val depending on $switch. So, if $val = 8, and 
 *    $bit = 4, $switch is true, it will turn on the 4 bit, 
 *    and $val will end up being 12; Now, if $val = 12, and $bit 
 *    is 5, if $switch is true, $val will be 13, if false $val 
 *    will be 8. So, all the bits of $bit is turned on or off
 *
 */
function setBit($val, $bit, $switch = true) {
    $val = (int) $val;
    $bit = (int) $bit;

    // set some strings that humans would consider false
    // but would be converted to true if converted by PHP
    if (is_string($switch)) {
        switch ($switch) {
            case 'false' :
            case 'down' :
            case 'off' :
            case 'not' :
            case '0' :
            case '' :
                $switch = false;
                break;

            default :
                $switch = true;
                break;
        }
    }

    if ($switch) { // we are turning the bits on
        $newval = $val | $bit; // val OR bit
    }
    else { // we are turning the bits off
        $newval = $val & ( ~ $bit); // val AND ( NOT bit)
    }

    return $newval;
}
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