^

[Bitwise Operators]

Description

There is a somewhat unusual operator in C++ called bitwise EXCLUSIVE OR, also known as bitwise XOR. (In English this is usually pronounced “eks-or”.) The bitwise XOR operator is written using the caret symbol ^. This operator is very similar to the bitwise OR operator |, only it evaluates to 0 for a given bit position when both of the input bits for that position are 1:

0  0  1  1    operand1
0  1  0  1    operand2
----------
0  1  1  0    (operand1 ^ operand2) - returned result

Another way to look at bitwise XOR is that each bit in the result is a 1 if the input bits are different, or 0 if they are the same.

Example Code

Here is a simple code example:

int x = 12;     // binary: 1100
int y = 10;     // binary: 1010
int z = x ^ y;  // binary: 0110, or decimal 6

The ^ operator is often used to toggle (i.e. change from 0 to 1, or 1 to 0) some of the bits in an integer expression. In a bitwise OR operation if there is a 1 in the mask bit, that bit is inverted; if there is a 0, the bit is not inverted and stays the same.

// Note: This code uses registers specific to AVR microcontrollers (Uno, Nano, Leonardo, Mega, etc.)
// it will not compile for other architectures
void setup() {
  DDRB = DDRB | 0b00100000;  // set PB5 (pin 13 on Uno/Nano, pin 9 on Leonardo/Micro, pin 11 on Mega) as OUTPUT
  Serial.begin(9600);
}

void loop() {
  PORTB = PORTB ^ 0b00100000;  // invert PB5, leave others untouched
  delay(100);
}

See also

• [Example] BitMath Tutorial

Language Reference Home

The text of the 86Duino reference is a modification of the Arduino reference and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License. Code samples in the reference are released into the public domain.