hi,
Maybe he means gathering some arbitrary bits from different ports?

Who knows? Original post said:
"move the state of to port bits to a single register"
I translated it into:
"move the state of two port's bits to a single register" what means that somebody needs to take two bits from a single port and hold them into one register. If he wishes to take some bits from TWO ports then in English it should be:
"move the state of two ports' bits to a single register" or better:
"move the state of bits of two ports to a single register"

Regards,
Oleg