Is there no XOR operator for booleans in golang?

Question

Is there no XOR operator for booleans in golang?

I was trying to do something like b1^b2 but it said it wasn't defined for booleans.

Loathsome

Answer 1

There is not. Go does not provide a logical exclusive-OR operator (i.e. XOR over booleans) and the bitwise XOR operator applies only to integers.

However, an exclusive-OR can be rewritten in terms of other logical operators. When re-evaluation of the expressions (X and Y) is ignored,

X xor Y -> (X || Y) && !(X && Y)

Or, more trivially as Jsor pointed out,

X xor Y <-> X != Y

Clevey

why isn't there one built in? I find it so weird. – Loathsome

While your definition of XOR is true, I'd go with x != y – Bookmaker

@Jsor Doh. I miss the obvious far too often :| Updated. – Clevey

You could say that Go does have an exclusive-or operator for bool, and it's spelled !=. – Lemley

all good until you need something like boolVar XOR boolFunc() – Czarevitch

Answer 2

With booleans an xor is simply:

if boolA != boolB {

}

In this context not equal to performs the same function as xor: the statement can only be true if one of the booleans is true and one is false.

Endure

Clearly (s == "test") != ( s == "not test") does not work – Syndetic

@Syndetic it works. XOR returns true if an only if only 1 of the 2 operands are true, and in your expression there are always a true and a false results, and false != true is true, which is the same as false XOR true – Uruguay

Answer 3

Go support bitwise operators as of today. In case someone came here looking for the answer.

Cousteau