What is the meaning of ^= operator in JS [duplicate]

Question

I am trying to figure out this operator on JS -

'string' ^= 'string';

But I can not find ant information. Is that a comparison or assignment ?

Thanks.

Answer 1

myVar ^= 5 is the same as myVar = myVar ^ 5. ^ is the bitwise xor operator

Let's say myVar was set to 2

• 5 in binary is: 101
• 2 in binary is: 010

Exclusive "or" checks the first bit of both numbers and sees 1,0 and returns 1 then sees 0,1 and returns 1 and sees 1,0 and returns 1.

Thus 111 which converted back to decimal is 7

So 5^2 is 7

var myVar = 2;
myVar ^= 5;
alert(myVar); // 7

Answer 2

^ (caret) is the Bitwise XOR (Exclusive Or) operator. As with more common operator combinations like +=, a ^= b is equivalent to a = a^b.

See the Javascript documentation from Mozilla for more details.