What function does the ^ (caret) operator serve in Java?
When I try this:
int a = 5^n;
...it gives me:
for n = 5, returns 0
for n = 4, returns 1
for n = 6, returns 3
...so I guess it doesn't perform exponentiation. But what is it then?
The ^ operator in Java
^ in Java is the exclusive-or ("xor") operator.
Let's take 5^6 as example:
(decimal) (binary)
5 = 101
6 = 110
------------------ xor
3 = 011
This the truth table for bitwise (JLS 15.22.1) and logical (JLS 15.22.2) xor:
^ | 0 1 ^ | F T
--+----- --+-----
0 | 0 1 F | F T
1 | 1 0 T | T F
More simply, you can also think of xor as "this or that, but not both!".
See also
Wikipedia: exclusive-or
Exponentiation in Java
As for integer exponentiation, unfortunately Java does not have such an operator. You can use double Math.pow(double, double) (casting the result to int if necessary).
You can also use the traditional bit-shifting trick to compute some powers of two. That is, (1L << k) is two to the k-th power for k=0..63.
See also
Wikipedia: Arithmetic shift
Merge note: this answer was merged from another question where the intention was to use exponentiation to convert a string "8675309" to int without using Integer.parseInt as a programming exercise (^ denotes exponentiation from now on). The OP's intention was to compute 8*10^6 + 6*10^5 + 7*10^4 + 5*10^3 + 3*10^2 + 0*10^1 + 9*10^0 = 8675309; the next part of this answer addresses that exponentiation is not necessary for this task.
Horner's scheme
Addressing your specific need, you actually don't need to compute various powers of 10. You can use what is called the Horner's scheme, which is not only simple but also efficient.
Since you're doing this as a personal exercise, I won't give the Java code, but here's the main idea:
8675309 = 8*10^6 + 6*10^5 + 7*10^4 + 5*10^3 + 3*10^2 + 0*10^1 + 9*10^0
= (((((8*10 + 6)*10 + 7)*10 + 5)*10 + 3)*10 + 0)*10 + 9
It may look complicated at first, but it really isn't. You basically read the digits left to right, and you multiply your result so far by 10 before adding the next digit.
In table form:
step result digit result*10+digit
1 init=0 8 8
2 8 6 86
3 86 7 867
4 867 5 8675
5 8675 3 86753
6 86753 0 867530
7 867530 9 8675309=final
As many people have already pointed out, it's the XOR operator. Many people have also already pointed out that if you want exponentiation then you need to use Math.pow.
But I think it's also useful to note that ^ is just one of a family of operators that are collectively known as bitwise operators:
Operator Name Example Result Description
a & b and 3 & 5 1 1 if both bits are 1.
a | b or 3 | 5 7 1 if either bit is 1.
a ^ b xor 3 ^ 5 6 1 if both bits are different.
~a not ~3 -4 Inverts the bits.
n << p left shift 3 << 2 12 Shifts the bits of n left p positions. Zero bits are shifted into the low-order positions.
n >> p right shift 5 >> 2 1 Shifts the bits of n right p positions. If n is a 2's complement signed number, the sign bit is shifted into the high-order positions.
n >>> p right shift -4 >>> 28 15 Shifts the bits of n right p positions. Zeros are shifted into the high-order positions.
From here.
These operators can come in handy when you need to read and write to integers where the individual bits should be interpreted as flags, or when a specific range of bits in an integer have a special meaning and you want to extract only those. You can do a lot of every day programming without ever needing to use these operators, but if you ever have to work with data at the bit level, a good knowledge of these operators is invaluable.
It's bitwise XOR, Java does not have an exponentiation operator, you would have to use Math.pow() instead.
XOR operator rule =>
0 ^ 0 = 0
1 ^ 1 = 0
0 ^ 1 = 1
1 ^ 0 = 1
Binary representation of 4, 5 and 6 :
4 = 1 0 0
5 = 1 0 1
6 = 1 1 0
now, perform XOR operation on 5 and 4:
5 ^ 4 => 1 0 1 (5)
1 0 0 (4)
----------
0 0 1 => 1
Similarly,
5 ^ 5 => 1 0 1 (5)
1 0 1 (5)
------------
0 0 0 => (0)
5 ^ 6 => 1 0 1 (5)
1 1 0 (6)
-----------
0 1 1 => 3
It is the XOR bitwise operator.
Lot many people have already explained about what it is and how it can be used but apart from the obvious you can use this operator to do a lot of programming tricks like
XORing of all the elements in a boolean array would tell you if the array has odd number of true elements
If you have an array with all numbers repeating even number of times except one which repeats odd number of times you can find that by XORing all elements.
Swapping values without using temporary variable
Finding missing number in the range 1 to n
Basic validation of data sent over the network.
Lot many such tricks can be done using bit wise operators, interesting topic to explore.
XOR operator rule
0 ^ 0 = 0
1 ^ 1 = 0
0 ^ 1 = 1
1 ^ 0 = 1
Bitwise operator works on bits and performs bit-by-bit operation. Assume if a = 60 and b = 13; now in binary format they will be as follows −
a = 0011 1100
b = 0000 1101
a^b ==> 0011 1100 (a)
0000 1101 (b)
------------- XOR
0011 0001 => 49
(a ^ b) will give 49 which is 0011 0001
As others have said, it's bitwise XOR. If you want to raise a number to a given power, use Math.pow(a , b), where a is a number and b is the power.
AraK's link points to the definition of exclusive-or, which explains how this function works for two boolean values.
The missing piece of information is how this applies to two integers (or integer-type values). Bitwise exclusive-or is applied to pairs of corresponding binary digits in two numbers, and the results are re-assembled into an integer result.
To use your example:
The binary representation of 5 is 0101.
The binary representation of 4 is 0100.
A simple way to define bitwise XOR is to say the result has a 1 in every place where the two input numbers differ.
With 4 and 5, the only difference is in the last place; so
0101 ^ 0100 = 0001 (5 ^ 4 = 1) .
It is the Bitwise xor operator in java which results 1 for different value of bit (ie 1 ^ 0 = 1) and 0 for same value of bit (ie 0 ^ 0 = 0) when a number is written in binary form.
ex :-
To use your example:
The binary representation of 5 is 0101.
The binary representation of 4 is 0100.
A simple way to define Bitwise XOR is to say the result has a 1 in every place where the two input numbers differ.
0101 ^ 0100 = 0001 (5 ^ 4 = 1) .
To perform exponentiation, you can use Math.pow instead:
https://docs.oracle.com/javase/1.5.0/docs/api/java/lang/Math.html#pow%28double,%20double%29
As already stated by the other answer(s), it's the "exclusive or" (XOR) operator. For more information on bit-operators in Java, see: http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/java/nutsandbolts/op3.html
That is because you are using the xor operator.
In java, or just about any other language, ^ is bitwise xor,
so of course,
10 ^ 1 = 11.
more info about bitwise operators
It's interesting how Java and C# don't have a power operator.
It is the bitwise xor operator in java which results 1 for different value (ie 1 ^ 0 = 1) and 0 for same value (ie 0 ^ 0 = 0).
^ is binary (as in base-2) xor, not exponentiation (which is not available as a Java operator). For exponentiation, see java.lang.Math.pow().
It is XOR operator. It is use to do bit operations on numbers. It has the behavior such that when you do a xor operation on same bits say 0 XOR 0 / 1 XOR 1 the result is 0. But if any of the bits is different then result is 1.
So when you did 5^3 then you can look at these numbers 5, 6 in their binary forms and thus the expression becomes (101) XOR (110) which gives the result (011) whose decimal representation is 3.
As an addition to the other answers, it's worth mentioning that the caret operator can also be used with boolean operands, and it returns true (if and only if) the operands are different:
System.out.println(true ^ true); // false
System.out.println(true ^ false); // true
System.out.println(false ^ false); // false
System.out.println(false ^ true); // true
^ = (bitwise XOR)
Description
Binary XOR Operator copies the bit if it is set in one operand but not both.
example
(A ^ B) will give 49 which is 0011 0001
In other languages like Python you can do 10**2=100, try it.
I see this comment, but don't understand it.
Get its last set bit
diff &= -diff;
I tried
int a = 3 & -3; it returns 1.
int a = 2 & -2; it returns 2.
int a = 4 & -4; it returns 4.
int a = 5 & -5; it returns 1.
The comment would be better expressed as 'Get the least significant bit set'. To understand what is going on, you need to examine how negative numbers are represented in binary. The technique is called twos complement and works by starting with the positive representation of the number; you complement each bit (i.e. 1 -> 0 and 0 -> 1). You then add 1 to this number. In the example of 12:
00001100 12
11110011 complement
00000001 binary 1
11110100 add to complement to form twos complement negative
If you now AND the original value with the negative, you get
00000100
where the only bit set corresponds to the least significant bit set in the original pattern.
As the comment said, diff & -diff returns the value of the last bit that was set on diff. For example:
diff = 14
.... = 1110 (binary)
.... ^ last set bit
.... 10 is the last set bit
.... 10 in decimal is 2
Another example
diff = 24
.... = 11000 (binary)
.... ^ last set bit
.... 1000 is the last set bit
.... 1000 in decimal is 8
I would recommend reading the guidelines for how to ask a well formulated question. One recommendation I can personally give is to have one sentence at the end of your question that sums up exactly what it is you want to know.
There was a question asked:
"Presented with the integer n, find the 0-based position of the second
rightmost zero bit in its binary representation (it is guaranteed that
such a bit exists), counting from right to left.
Return the value of 2position_of_the_found_bit."
I had written below solution which works fine.
int secondRightmostZeroBit(int n) {
return (int)Math.pow(2,Integer.toBinaryString(n).length()-1-Integer.toBinaryString(n).lastIndexOf('0',Integer.toBinaryString(n).lastIndexOf('0')-1)) ;
}
But below was the best voted solution which I also liked as it has just few characters of codding and serving the purpose, but I could not understand it. Can someone explain how bit manipulation is helping to achieve it .
int secondRightmostZeroBit(int n) {
return ~(n|(n+1)) & ((n|(n+1))+1) ;
}
Consider some number having at least two 0 bits. Here is an example of such a number with the 2 rightmost 0 bits marked (x...x are bits we don't care about which can be either 0 or 1, and 1...1 are the sequences of zero or more 1 bits to the right and to the left of the rightmost 0 bit) :
x...x01...101...1 - that's n
If you add 1 to that number you get :
x...x01...110...0 - that's (n+1)
which means the right most 0 bit flipped to 1
therefore n|(n+1) would give you:
x...x01...111...1 - that's n|(n+1)
If you add 1 to n|(n+1) you get:
x...x100........0 - that's (n|(n+1))+1
which means the second right most 0 bit also flips to 1
Now, ~(n|(n+1)) is
y...y10.........0 - that's ~(n|(n+1))
where each y bit is the inverse of the corresponding x bit
therefore ~(n|(n+1)) & ((n|(n+1))+1) gives
0...010.........0
where the only 1 bit is at the location of the second rightmost 0 bit of the input number.
The number 254 is 11111110 in binary. My problem is I want to grab the last 2 bits (10). I was told to use the % operator to do this but I don't know how. Can anyone help me with this problem?
Supposing you want to get the numeric value of the last 2 binary digits, we can use a mask.
public static void main(String[] args) {
int n = 0b1110;
int mask = 0b11;
System.out.println(n & mask);
}
What the code is doing is taking the number, in this case 0b1110 and doing an and with the mask defined 0b11.
0b is how you tell java that you are expressing the number as binary.
In case you wanted to obtain the binary number as binary, you can use this:
Integer.toBinaryString(n & mask)
You can use % to convert to binary but I believe its easier to use Integer.toBinaryString() and then charAt() to get the last 2 characters like they do in here
How do you get the last character of a string?
The last two bits can be obtained by doing x % 4, or by doing x & 3.
x % 4 is remainder after division by 4, which is a number 0-3, as represented by the last two bits.
x & 3 is a bit-wise AND operation with the binary number 11, i.e. zero'ing all other bits.
The second is generally the fastest at runtime, and the preferred method for doing bit manipulation. (Use a bit-wise operator for bit manipulation, right?)
This may seem to you a very easy question but I am really stuck.
e = 16 >> 1 >> 2 % 2 == 8
This turns out to be true, but I don't get why. I know that I first do 2%2==0 but then what follows?
As you've said, the 2 % 2 gets evaluated first, leaving 16 >> 1 >> 0 == 8. Next comes the first >>, and when you right-shift 16 by one bit, you get 8. So the expression becomes 8 >> 0 == 8.
The next operator is the remaining >>, but now you're right-shifting by zero bits, which of course changes nothing; and the expression is 8 == 8. The last operation is ==, which of course returns true.
Note that when you right-shift an integer by one bit, it's the same as halving its value (and rounding down, if the original integer was odd). Whatever number of bits you right-shift by, you have to halve that many times. For example, 64 >> 3 is the same as 64 / 2 / 2 / 2 which is 8.
== is (apart from the assignment =) the weakest binding operation, so you have 16 >> 1 >> 0 that is compared to 8, and that is true.