Left shift assignment (<<=)

Baseline Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since July 2015.

The left shift assignment (<<=) operator performs left shift on the two operands and assigns the result to the left operand.

Try it

let a = 5; // 00000000000000000000000000000101 a <<= 2; // 00000000000000000000000000010100 console.log(a); // Expected output: 20 

Syntax

js
x <<= y 

Description

x <<= y is equivalent to x = x << y, except that the expression x is only evaluated once.

Examples

Using left shift assignment

js
let a = 5; // 00000000000000000000000000000101 a <<= 2; // 20 // 00000000000000000000000000010100 let b = 5n; b <<= 2n; // 20n 

Specifications

Specification
ECMAScript® 2026 Language Specification
# sec-assignment-operators

Browser compatibility

See also