On 2023-11-14, Dom Grigonis via Python-list <python-list@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. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
