Python - How To XOR in Python

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This tutorial will explain multiple ways to perform XOR (exclusive OR) operation on two variables in Python. The XOR operation is usually used in different protocols like in error checking or in situations where we do not want two conditions to be true at the same time.

Get XOR in Python Using the ^ Operator

The ^ operator in Python is for bitwise XOR and can also be used on booleans. The below code examples demonstrate how we can perform XOR operation on the Booleans and bitwise XOR operation on the integers.

Python XOR Operation Example 1:

a = bool(1) b = bool(0) print(a^b) 

Output:

True 

Python XOR Operation Example 2:

a = 3  b = 5  print(a^b) 

Output:

6 

3 in binary is 0b11 and 5 is 0b101, so the XOR of 0b011 and 0b101 will be 0b110, which is 6 in decimal.

Get XOR in Python Using Logical Operators

We can implement a user-defined xor() method using logical operators in Python. The below code example shows how we can implement the xor() method on booleans using and, or and not operators in Python.

Example code:

def xor(x, y):     return bool((x and not y) or (not x and y))  print(xor(0,0)) print(xor(0,1)) print(xor(1,0)) print(xor(1,1)) 

Output:

False True True False 

Get XOR in Python Using the Built-In xor() Method

The xor() method of the operator module of Python can also be used to get XOR of Booleans and integers. The functionality of xor() method in Python is the same as the ^ operator. It also performs bitwise XOR operation on integers and XOR operation on the booleans. The below example code explains how to use the xor() method to apply XOR on booleans and integers.

from operator import xor  print(xor(bool(0),bool(0))) print(xor(5,3)) 

Output:

False 6