xor operator

[Grant Edwards]

On 2023-11-14, Dom Grigonis via Python-list <python-list at python.org> wrote:
>
>> Except the 'any' and 'all' builtins are _exactly_ the same as bitwise
>> or and and applided to many bits. To do something "in line" with that
>> using the 'xor' operator would return True for an odd number of True
>> values and False for an even Number of True values.
>
> Fair point.
>
> Have you ever encountered the need for xor for many bits (the one
> that I am NOT referring to)? Would be interested in what sort of
> case it could be useful.

Yes, it's used all the time in low-level communications protocols,
where it's often implemented in hardware. But, it is also not at all
unusual to implement it in software.

It's also not that unusual for the "count-ones" part of the function
you're asking for to be implemented in hardware by a CPU having an
instruction that counts the number of 1 bits in a register.

GCC has a low-level builtins called __builtin_popcount() and
__builtin-popcountl() that counts the number of 1's in an unsigned
(long) int.