What does the ^ (XOR) operator do?
What mathematical operation does XOR perform?
Answer
XOR is a binary operation, it stands for "exclusive or", that is to say the resulting bit evaluates to one if only exactly one of the bits is set.
This is its function table:
a | b | a ^ b
--|---|------
0 | 0 | 0
0 | 1 | 1
1 | 0 | 1
1 | 1 | 0
This operation is performed between every two corresponding bits of a number.
Example: 7 ^ 10
In binary: 0111 ^ 1010
0111
^ 1010
======
1101 = 13
Properties: The operation is commutative, associative and self-inverse.
It is also the same as addition modulo 2.