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Yes, I use this on long integers.  And, the whole point of doing 
shifts is to avoid the costs of computing and multiplying by 
powers of two.  Besides the math equivalents do not express the 
algorithms as well or as directly as shifts.

Other than coming up with cumbersome workarounds (which I 
already had), do you have an objection to letting the shift 
operators use negative indices (in much the same way as with 
array indices)?