|= operator

I was reading a game programming book, and I came across an operator that I never say before, it was

Code:

 |=

was does that symbolize?

It means set the variable to itself or'd with the operand. In other words:

Code:

int x = 1;
x |= 6; // set x equal to x or'd with 6

its shorthand for x = x | 6;

Just like x += 6 is shorthand for x = x + 6