title: What does multiplying a bit by 256 do
body: <p>I have seen people multiply bits by 256 before and im wondering why they do it and what it does?</p>
  <pre><code>local function getBits32(streamString)
    local W, X, Y, Z  = string.byte(streamString, streamPosition, streamPositon + 3);
    
    streamPosition = streamPosition + 4;
    
    return (Z * 16777216) + (Y * 65536) + (X * 256) + W;
  end;
  </code></pre>