Xor Operation in Python: Beyond Bitwise Logic

Understanding the logical XOR operation in Python can be tricky, especially when comparing non-boolean variables like strings. The bitwise ^ operator, commonly used for bitwise XOR, falls short for this purpose.

Solution: Boolean XOR

If the goal is to check if exactly one of two variables contains a True value, a simple solution is the != operator. This checks if the boolean values of the two variables differ. So, for strings:

bool(str1) != bool(str2)

This will return True if one variable is not None or an empty string while the other is, fulfilling the XOR condition.

Example

Using the example code:

str1 = input("Enter string one:")
str2 = input("Enter string two:")
if bool(str1) != bool(str2):
    print("ok")
else:
    print("bad")

This code will correctly determine whether only one string contains a non-empty value and print "ok" in that case.