#1,110 – The Bitwise Exclusive OR Operator

You can use the ^ operator to do a bitwise exclusive OR (“XOR”) operation between two integer-based values.

An exclusive OR operation is applied to two different bits, returning true if exactly one of the input bits is true.  Here is a truth table showing the output value for all possible input combinations.

• 0 ^ 0 = 0
• 0 ^ 1 = 1
• 1 ^ 0 = 1
• 1 ^ 1 = 0

You can use the ^ operator on two arbitrary integer values as shown below.  The operation is applied to the two integer values, one bit at a time.

            int n1 = 12;
            int n2 = 10;
            int result = n1 ^ n2;
            Console.WriteLine("{0} ^ {1} = {2}", n1, n2, result);

It may help to use hex notation in order to better understand how the exclusive OR operation works on each bit.

            int n1 = 0xC;  // 12 (dec) or 1100 (bin)
            int n2 = 0xA;  // 10 (dec) or 1010 (bin)

            // Result = 0110 bin (6 dec)
            int result = n1 ^ n2;