How to add two numbers without using ++ or + or another arithmetic operator

Question

How do I add two numbers without using ++ or + or any other arithmetic operator?

It was a question asked a long time ago in some campus interview. Anyway, today some

Answer 1

If you're feeling comedic, there's always this spectacularly awful approach for adding two (relatively small) unsigned integers. No arithmetic operators anywhere in your code.

In C#:

static uint JokeAdder(uint a, uint b)
{
    string result = string.Format(string.Format("{{0,{0}}}{{1,{1}}}", a, b), null, null);
    return result.Length;
}

In C, using stdio (replace snprintf with _snprintf on Microsoft compilers):

#include 
unsigned int JokeAdder(unsigned int a, unsigned int b)
{
    return snprintf(NULL, 0, "%*.*s%*.*s", a, a, "", b, b, "");
}