problem to use carets for swap of two number

Question

a^=b b^=a a^=b is this code work in c# for swap of two numbers. if yes what is the logic behind this i know it is OR operator but i thought that it is use only with bool function.

Vulpes · Answer

The caret operator ^ has two uses in C#: 1. As a logical operator which returns the 'exclusive or' of its two bool operands A and B. In other words it returns true if either A or B (but not both) are true and false otherwise. 2. As a bitwise operator which operates on the respective bits of its two integer operands C and D. The corresponding bit of the result is 1 if the bits of either C or D (but not both) are 1 and 0 otherwise. In the following code 'a' and 'b' are integers and so ^ is being used as a bitwise operator: a ^= b b ^= a a ^= b To try and understand how this code works let's consider a simple example where a = 1 and b = 0. If we write down the least significant eight bits of each integer we have: /* a ^= b */ a = 00000001 b = 00000000 ----------------- a = 00000001 /* b ^= a */ b = 00000000 a = 00000001 ----------------- b = 00000001 /* a ^= b */ a = 00000001 b = 00000001 ----------------- a = 00000000 So we end up with a = 0 and b = 1 showing that we've swapped their initial values.