What does the caret operator (^) in Python do?

Question

I ran across the caret operator in python today and trying it out, I got the following output:

>>> 8^3
11
>>> 8^4
12
>>> 8^1
9
>         


        

Answer 1

It's a bitwise XOR (exclusive OR).

It results to true if one (and only one) of the operands (evaluates to) true.

To demonstrate:

>>> 0^0
0
>>> 1^1
0
>>> 1^0
1
>>> 0^1
1

To explain one of your own examples:

>>> 8^3
11

Think about it this way:

1000  # 8 (binary)
0011  # 3 (binary)
----  # APPLY XOR ('vertically')
1011  # result = 11 (binary)