xor of elements of a list/tuple

Question

I have a tuple of '0' and '1', and I want the xor of all its element. For example, if I have ('0', '1', '1', '0'), I want to obtain ((0 xor 1) xor 1) xor 0.

I have the following (working) snippet:

bit = ('0', '1', '0', '1', '0', '1', '0')
out = bit[0]
for i in range(1, len(bit)):
    out = int(out) ^ int(bit[i])
print str(out)

How can I make it in a more pythonic way (using map and a lambda function ?)

Answer 1

print reduce(lambda i, j: int(i) ^ int(j), bit)

reduce(...) reduce(function, sequence[, initial]) -> value

Apply a function of two arguments cumulatively to the items of a sequence, from left to right, so as to reduce the sequence to a single value. For example, reduce(lambda x, y: x+y, [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]) calculates ((((1+2)+3)+4)+5). If initial is present, it is placed before the items of the sequence in the calculation, and serves as a default when the sequence is empty.

Answer 2

As has been mentioned, reduce works well. If you read about reduce, you will come across the concept of a fold which is a higher order function (like map).

In some languages you can fold left or right. Interestingly in your case, you would get the same result if you started from the left or the right as xor is commutative and associative.