The Java® Language Specification, Java SE 7 Edition, Fourth Edition

15.19. Shift Operators

The operators << (left shift), >> (signed right shift), and >>> (unsigned right shift) are called the shift operators. The left-hand operand of a shift operator is the value to be shifted; the right-hand operand specifies the shift distance.

ShiftExpression:    AdditiveExpression    ShiftExpression << AdditiveExpression    ShiftExpression >> AdditiveExpression    ShiftExpression >>> AdditiveExpression

The shift operators are syntactically left-associative (they group left-to-right).

Unary numeric promotion (§5.6.1) is performed on each operand separately. (Binary numeric promotion (§5.6.2) is not performed on the operands.)

It is a compile-time error if the type of each of the operands of a shift operator, after unary numeric ...