I'm curious about the purpose of the "^=" operator in this algorithm for finding the unpaired numbers. What exactly does it do?

I came across a fascinating code snippet that helps find a unique number in a list of duplicate numbers (where each number appears twice, except for one).

function findNonPaired(listOfNumbers) {
  let nonPairedNumber = 0

  listOfNumbers.forEach((n) => {
      nonPairedNumber ^= n
  })

  return nonPairedNumber
}

const x = [1,5,4,3,9,2,3,1,4,5,9]
console.log(findNonPaired(x))

This solution seems quite elegant, but I'm curious about the functionality of the ^= operator in this context.

Answer №1

x ^= y is equivalent to x = x ^ y where the operator ^ represents bitwise XOR.

0 ^ 0 === 0
1 ^ 0 === 1
0 ^ 1 === 1
1 ^ 1 === 0

This algorithm is interesting. Let's walk through an example using the sequence [8, 12, 8]:

0 ^ 8 = 0000 ^ 1000 = 1000
        1000 ^ 1100 = 0100
        0100 ^ 1000 = 1100 = 12

The term "duplicate" may be misleading. The algorithm actually checks for parity. A simple explanation could be "when everything forms a pair". pair...parity.

In the case of [2,2,2,3,3,5,5,5,5], the result will be 2 because all other elements form pairs.

For [3,4,5], the output will be 2 (011^100^101 -> 010) as that is the xor of the unpaired numbers.

Answer №2

As mentioned by other responses, the operation being performed is a bitwise XOR.

In terms of the algorithm itself, it works well when dealing with duplicates in even numbers. When a number is XOR-ed with x, and then XOR-ed again with x, it will revert back to its original value. However, if a number appears for the third time in this sequence, it can disrupt the algorithm. Additionally, if there is another unique value within the chain such as:

a, b, c, X, a, c, b, Y

the final result will be (X ^ Y), making it difficult to determine if there is only one unique value or more than one.

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