Doubt in exclusive OR operator

[Rajshekhar Paul]

SCJP 6 K&B book -> Chapter 4: Operators -> page 309.

At one point it says that -
For an exclusive-OR (^) expression to be true, EXACTLY one operand must be true�for example.
System.out.printIn ("xor " + ((2<3) ^ (4>3)));

At another point it says that -
The preceding expression evaluates to false because BOTH operand one (2 < 3) and operand two (4 > 3) evaluate to true.

I am not able to digest the above things. May be I am confused with the exclusive OR(^) operator. Could someone help me up about this operator?

[Aum Tao]

You will understand it better if you think of it as an OR operator, except that it will return false even when both the conditions are true.

System.out.printIn ("xor " + ((2<3) ^ (4>3)));

returns false because both conditions evaluate to true i.e. 2 < 3 is true
and so is 4 > 3

[Ankit Garg]

exclusive or (AKA Xor) returns true if one of the operands is true.

If you go into some more depth, Xor will return true only if the number of true expressions is odd i.e. 1,3,5 etc.

eg

true ^ true ^ false

will return false...

[Maya Karthik]

Hi Rajshekhar,

The exclusive OR operator works as follows:

true ^ true = false
true ^ false = true
false ^ true = true
false ^ false = false

when both the operands are of the same value whether it is true or false, the result is false. Otherwise the result is true.Hope this clarifies.


Thanks,
Maya

[Rajshekhar Paul]

Thanks Prateek, Ankit and Maya for the helpful replies. I got it now.
[ December 10, 2008: Message edited by: Rajshekhar Paul ]