2.24 Integer Swapping With XOR

Juppies 2 by Dr Heinz M. Kabutz

Whilst the integer swap with plus and minus works, we can do it in an even cooler way. I've written a course called Bits and Bytes that shows how to code at a very low level in Java. Heartily recommended to help understand bitwise arithmetic in Java.

Instead of the confusing plus and minus, we can simply swap two ints x and y like this:

x ^= y
y ^= x
x ^= y

We can run our application, which runs our tests and starts up the game.

(You might justifiably wonder when you will ever need this XOR swapping trick "in the real world". I have never used it, and I have also never seen code that used it. So what is the point? Unfortunately before you can get a chance to code "in the real world" you need to run the gauntlet of the job interview. Some unimaginative interviewers might lob this at you, being the only thing they remember from their CSC 101W class. Being able to effortlessly answer: "Oh, I'd just XOR the two variables with each other a few times." might get you the job you are after. And once you have that job, you can be that person who throws it at the next hopeful programmer trying to enter the realm of the employed programmer." A temporary variable is not a big deal. Java will anyway optimize the code well. It is better to write clear obvious code than to use obscure tricks to make us look clever.)

Previous Chapter Previous Lesson Next Lesson Next Chapter

Previous Chapter Previous Lesson Next Lesson Next Chapter

Comments

Table of Contents

• 0.1: Programming is a team sport - source control
• 0.2: Creating an account on GitHub
• 0.3: Forking the Juppies2 repository from kabutz
• 0.4: Oracle JDK
• 0.5: Oracle OpenJDK
• 0.6: Azul's Zulu OpenJDK
• 0.7: Installing the Oracle OpenJDK
• 0.8: Integrated Development Environments (IDEs)
• 0.9: Downloading Apache NetBeans
• 0.10: Loading our Juppies2 Project in Apache NetBeans
• 0.11: Running the AnagramGame with Apache NetBeans
• 0.12: Downloading IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition
• 0.13: Installing IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition
• 0.14: Running the AnagramGame with IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition
• 0.15: Downloading and Installing Eclipse
• 0.16: Running the AnagramGame with Eclipse
• 1.1: AnagramGame Project Structure
• 1.2: WordLibrary
• 1.3: Swing User Interface (UI)
• 1.4: Buffer Overflows
• 1.5: Demo of New Word Button
• 1.6: Demo of Guess Button
• 1.7: StaticWordLibrary Structure
• 1.8: StaticWordLibrary Details
• 1.9: Changing the Size of Our StaticWordLibrary
• 1.10: How my Buffer Overflow Wiped my Colleague's Hard Disk
• 1.11: Adding Our Own Words to the StaticWordLibrary
• 1.12: WordLibraryTest With JUnit
• 1.13: Java's For Loop
• 1.14: Testing That Words Are Anagrams
• 1.15: Running JUnit
• 1.16: isAnagram() Method
• 1.17: Fixing StaticWordLibrary
• 1.18: WordLibraries Facade
• 1.19: Find Usages
• 1.20: Exercise
• 1.21: Commiting Changes
• 1.22: GitHub Repository
• 1.23: Pushing Commits to Remote Repository on GitHub
• 1.24: Until Next Time
• 2.1: Welcome back
• 2.2: Setting up NetBeans Git Toolbar
• 2.3: Creating a Git Branch for Today's Session
• 2.4: Typical Directory Structure Under Maven
• 2.5: NetBeans Magic Shortcuts
• 2.6: Avoid Copy & Paste Programming
• 2.7: Creating a ShuffledWordLibrary
• 2.8: Integer Array for Shuffled Indexes
• 2.9: Finishing the methods to delegate to the other WordLibrary
• 2.10: Trying out the "ShuffledWordLibrary" That Does Not Really Shuffle
• 2.11: Committing Our Changes to Git
• 2.12: Shuffling the Integer Array
• 2.13: Trying Out the Shuffled Anagram List
• 2.14: Committing our "shuffle" method
• 2.15: ArrayShuffler
• 2.16: Creating an ArrayShufflerTest
• 2.17: Printing the indexes array
• 2.18: Fixing Random to be more random
• 2.19: Extending the Tests
• 2.20: The Goat, The Wolf and The Cabbage (Swapping Integer Values)
• 2.21: Testing the Integer Swapping Code
• 2.22: Testing Before Running Application
• 2.23: Fixing the Integer Swapping Code
• 2.24: Integer Swapping With XOR
• 2.25: Value of Source Control Systems
• 2.26: Changed WordLibrary from an Abstract Class to an Interface
• 2.27: Commit and Push
• 2.28: Until Next Time
• 3.1: Welcome back
• 3.2: Create a new Git Branch
• 3.3: ScrambledWordLibrary
• 3.4: SortedScrambledWordLibrary
• 3.5: Committing Entire Project At Once
• 3.6: Creating a RandomScrambledWordLibrary
• 3.7: Adding a shuffle(char[]) method
• 3.8: Testing the shuffle() method
• 3.9: Scrambler Strategy Extracted
• 3.10: Rot13Scrambler
• 3.11: OriginalScrambler
• 3.12: Moving Scrambler Interface Into ScrambledWordLibary Using IntelliJ IDEA
• 3.13: Moving Shuffler Implementations Into ScrambledWordLibrary
• 3.14: Danger of Overusing Inner Classer
• 3.15: Testing Refactoring
• 3.16: Beauty of IDE Interoperability
• 3.17: Anonymous Inner Classes
• 3.18: Converting Anonymous Inner Class to Lambda
• 3.19: Expression Lambdas
• 3.20: Font Ligatures
• 3.21: Testing and Commiting Lambdas
• 3.22: Turning Rot13Scrambler into a Lambda
• 3.23: Method References
• 3.24: Making ArrayShuffler.shuffle() Methods static
• 3.25: Forcing Everyone To Use Static Methods
• 3.26: DecoratedWordLibrary
• 3.27: ScrambledWordLibrary as a Decorator
• 3.28: ShuffledWordLibrary as a Decorator
• 3.29: Cleaning Up the Concrete Decorators
• 3.30: Updated Copyright Notices
• 3.31: Make Classes Final Where Possible
• 3.32: Commit and Push
• 3.33: Conclusion

We hope you enjoyed this tutorial. If you did, you will also enjoy our courses. We suggest you start with Extreme Java - Advanced Java, followed by Extreme Java - Concurrency Performance for Java 8.