Java bitwise operation Vs BigInteger

Question

Is there an advantage of using pure bitwise operations (& | ^ ~) over using BigInteger (BigInteger.and BigInteger.or) for bitwise operations in terms of performance? memory? anything else?

For i use BigInteger for bitwise operations because the resulting code is much more readble.

example for the code that i will be using:

BigInteger bNum1 = new BigInteger("0");
BigInteger bNum2 = new BigInteger("0");
BigInteger bNum3 = new BigInteger("0");
bNum1 = bNum1.setBit(0);
bNum2 = bNum2.setBit(1);
bNum3 = bNum3.setBit(2);

BigInteger bMask = bNum3.or(bNum1);

System.out.println(bMask.and(bNum1).equals(bMask));
System.out.println(bMask.and(bNum2).equals(bMask));
System.out.println(bMask.and(bNum3).equals(bMask));
System.out.println(bMask.and(bMask).equals(bMask));


int num1 = 1 << 0;
int num2 = 1 << 1;
int num3 = 1 << 2;

int mask = num3 | num1;

System.out.println((mask & num1) == mask);
System.out.println((mask & num2) == mask);
System.out.println((mask & num3) == mask);
System.out.println((mask & mask) == mask);

Answer 1

It is always more efficient to work with primitives both in terms of performance and memory. But BigInteger can work with numbers bigger than int and long. Eg

BigInteger b1 = new BigInteger("1111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111");
BigInteger b2 = new BigInteger("2222222222222222222222222222222222222222222222222");
BigInteger b3 = b1.and(b2);