boolean - What's the difference between XOR and NOT-EQUAL-TO?

Question

My question uses Java as an example, but I guess it applies to probably all.

Is there any practical difference between the XOR operator (^ in Java) and the not-equal-to operator (!= in Java), when comparing booleans?

I evaluated things here, but I just kept wondering (seems weird, two things equal)... and didn't find anything on the net. Just one discussion in some forum that ended quickly without any result.

Answer 1

For Boolean values, they mean the same thing - although there's a compound assignment operator for XOR:

x ^= y;

There's no equivalent compound assignment operator for inequality.

As for why they're both available - it would be odd for XOR not to be available just because it works the same way as inequality. It should logically be there, so it is. For non-Boolean types the result is different because it's a different result type, but that doesn't mean it would make sense to remove XOR for boolean.