How does the bitwise operator XOR ('^') work?

Question

I\'m a little confused when I see the output of following code:

$x = \"a\";
$y = \"b\";
$x ^= $y;
$y ^= $x;
$x ^= $y;
echo $x; //Got b
echo $y; //Got a
         


        

Answer 1

Th ^ operator is a bitwise operator, meaning that it operates on every bit of its operands.

It returns a value in which each bit is 1 if the two corresponding bits in the operands are unequal, and 0 if they're equal.

For example:

   100110110
 ^ 010001100   
 = 110111010