Balanced ternary shift operations have different results than binary shift operations for four reasons:
1) The value of each digit position is a power of three rather than a power of two.
2) The values that can be shifted out could be a -1, 0, or 1 instead of just a 0 or 1.
3) All balanced ternary numbers are signed (except 0, technically).
4) The sign trit is not necessarily the most significant trit of the number. Thus, both left shifts and right shifts may or may not alter the sign of the number.

On most binary architectures there are three shift operations and four circular shifts. The three ordinary shifts are the right logical shift, the right arithmetic shift, and the left shift.

In a left shift, each bit is shifted one position to the left. A zero take the place of the least significant bit and the most significant bit is lost. In some cases the MSB may be preserved in the carry flag of the status register.

A right logical shift is the same operation, but the shift is to the right. A zero takes the place of the most significant bit and the least significant bit is lost. It is proper to use for unsigned numbers. In most cases the LSB is not preserved in the carry flag of the status register.

A right arithmetic shift is a little different in that the least significant trit is lost, but the new most significant trit is copied over from the existing most significant trit so that it does not change. This is so that the sign of a signed number remains the same after a right shift. In some cases the LSB may be preserved in the carry flag of the status register.

In balanced ternary, a left shift is a multiplication by three just as long as the trit shifted out is a 0. If a non-zero value is shifted out then it is not a straight multiplication and the sign will have changed unless the new most significant trit is of the same value as the one that was lost.

There is no distinction between a right shift and a right arithmetic shift. They are the same thing because the sign of the number is dependent only on the most significant non-zero trit. By shifting in a 0, the sign of the number is automatically preserved. The exception is if the shift drops off the only non-zero trit at which point the overall value becomes zero.

A right shift is the equivalent of dividing the original value by three and rounding toward 0. If the trit shifted out was a 0, then the value was perfectly divided by three without rounding. Rounding toward zero means that if a - was shifted out, the number is rounded up toward 0, but if a + was shifted out, the number is rounded down toward 0. In balanced ternary, rounding always approaches zero, not +infinity or -infinity. In contrast, binary rounding always trends toward -infinity.

The circular shifts take the bit or trit that was shifted out and make that the value that gets shifted in on the opposite side. They have two directions, left and right, and two variants, with carry and without. The rotate-through-carry simply treats the carry-in digit as if it were the least significant digit, so the total length is word-length + 1.

There is no functional difference between binary and balanced ternary when it comes to circular shifts.