Interchanging values of two variables by xor operator using references or pointers

Question

I have two integer variables i and j and I want to make a function which takes these two variables as its argument and interchanges their contents using xor operator. Now if

Answer 1

As others have noted, this is a pretty silly optimization (if you can call it that). The problem is the chained use of in-place operators. Broken it into separable statements, it works.

x^=y;  // values are X^Y, Y
y^=x;  // values are X^Y, X
x^=y;  // values are Y, X

Like the others, I would encourage you not to riddle your code with such clarity-killing cleverness unless you have a demonstrable need established by profiling and a demonstrable speedup for doing your bit twiddling hack. (cool site)