Determine Parity without Modulus

A common technique for determining the parity of a number (is it even or odd?) is to divide the number by 2 and check to see if anything is left over. This makes sense of course. Typically the modulus operator is used (e.g. my_value % 2 == 0). However, you can achieve the same goal, with the same number of characters, without incurring the costs associated with modulus. Here is how:

my_value & 1 == 0

It turns out that the least-significant bit (LSB) of any given number defines the parity of that number. Let's look at the bits associated with a few numbers (1, 2, 3, 4, and 5)

1 = 001
2 = 010
3 = 011
4 = 100
5 = 101

If you look at the LSB (or right-most bit) for each number you'll see that all the odd numbers end in 1 and all of the even numbers end with 0. Bitwise &'ing that one bit will result in either a 0 (if the number is even) or a 1 (if the number is odd). If this is confusing you probably don't understand bitwise &. Google it. Any better language neutral options out there?