Bitwise XOR assignment (^=)
Baseline
Widely available
This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since July 2015.
The bitwise XOR assignment (^=) operator performs bitwise XOR on the two operands and assigns the result to the left operand.
Try it
let a = 5; / 00000000000000000000000000000101
a ^= 3; / 00000000000000000000000000000011
console.log(a); / 00000000000000000000000000000110
/ Expected output: 6
Syntax
js
x ^= y
Description
x ^= y is equivalent to x = x ^ y, except that the expression x is only evaluated once.
Examples
Using bitwise XOR assignment
js
let a = 5; / (00000000000000000000000000000101)
a ^= 3; / (00000000000000000000000000000011)
console.log(a); / 6 (00000000000000000000000000000110)
let b = 5; / (00000000000000000000000000000101)
b ^= 0; / (00000000000000000000000000000000)
console.log(b); / 5 (00000000000000000000000000000101)
let c = 5n;
c ^= 3n;
console.log(c); / 6n
Specifications
| Specification |
|---|
| ECMAScript® 2026 Language Specification # sec-assignment-operators |