What's the difference between XOR and NOT-EQUAL-TO?

boolean xor evaluation
davidcesarino picture davidcesarino · Nov 14, 2010 · Viewed 13.2k times · Source

My question uses Java as an example, but I guess it applies to probably all.

Is there any practical difference between the XOR operator (^ in Java) and the not-equal-to operator (!= in Java), when comparing booleans?

I evaluated things here, but I just kept wondering (seems weird, two things equal)... and didn't find anything on the net. Just one discussion in some forum that ended quickly without any result.

Answer

Jon Skeet picture Jon Skeet · Nov 14, 2010

For Boolean values, they mean the same thing - although there's a compound assignment operator for XOR:

x ^= y;

There's no equivalent compound assignment operator for inequality.

As for why they're both available - it would be odd for XOR not to be available just because it works the same way as inequality. It should logically be there, so it is. For non-Boolean types the result is different because it's a different result type, but that doesn't mean it would make sense to remove XOR for boolean.

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