This is a cool trick, but don’t write this as an actual swap function.

it doesnt like it because it fails when both variables are pointers to the same thing, but thats very rare and even so no high level language lets u use xor on anything but numerical types, which are not objects and could not have this problem.

The computer actually has an implicit “temp” variable that stores intermediate results before writing them back to a register.

also it tries to act like it just uses a variable but in disguise, but having a value in a register is far different from as a variable, and the cost is negligible compare to having it in a variable.

i dont really like the criticisms of this. i mean its important to know the fail condition obviously, but it acts like its a deal breaker, which it really isnt. it just means u need to be careful whenever swapping two objects that might point to the same thing. or if you do it via a function, to check for the fail condition yourself, and just return immediately (which since they are the same essentially does the swap too).

also everyone saying using +/- and */÷ are ignoring the overflow that could happen, and also xor very easily scales, since if you do multiple bytes the xor is independent, theres no carry or borrow or anything.

Glad you enjoyed it!