... if I have a hexadecimal number such as "1110 1111", I need to extract the left most "1" bit and left shift the original hexadecimal number resulting in "1101 1110" as the new value. ...

here is one more:

perl -e"$n = shift;
for (1..9){
    print substr (unpack('B32', pack('N', $n)), 24,8);
    $n=($n*2)%512;
    print ' - shifting: ' ,$n>255? 1:0,qq/\n/;
}" 239
11101111 - shifting: 1
11011110 - shifting: 1
10111100 - shifting: 1
01111000 - shifting: 0
11110000 - shifting: 1
11100000 - shifting: 1
11000000 - shifting: 1
10000000 - shifting: 1
00000000 - shifting: 0
[download]

Cheers, Christoph