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
>>> 8^0
8
>>> 7^1
6
>>> 7^2
5
>>> 7^7
0
>>> 7^8
15
>>> 9^1
8
>>> 16^1
17
>>> 15^1
14
>>>
It seems to be based on 8, so I'm guessing some sort of byte operation? I can't seem to find much about this searching sites other than it behaves oddly for floats, does anybody have a link to what this operator does or can you explain it here?
It's a bitwise XOR (exclusive OR).
It evaluates to True if and only if its arguments differ (one is True, the other is False).
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)