Logical XOR in JavaScript

By Zach Leatherman | Published: March 23, 2007

Of course there wouldn’t be an XOR function in JavaScript when I needed one. So I googled around and found an implementation at How To Create. But it only took two arguments. So I rolled my own supporting a variable number of arguments. In my personal stuff, I’ve put it into a Math library under the YAHOO namespace, and you can decide if you want to do that on your own.

function xor()
{
	var b = false;
	for( var j = 0; j < arguments.length; j++ )
	{
		if( arguments[ j ] && !b ) b = true;
		else if( arguments[ j ] && b ) return false;
	}
	return b;
};

Usage:

xor( false, true ); // true
xor( true, true ); // false
xor( false, false, true, true, true, false, true, false ); // false
xor( false, false, false, true, false, false, false, false ); // true
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  • Zach Leatherman is a Professional Front End Engineer. He loves building for the web and has been writing here since 2007. Feel free to stalk his résumé.

    He enjoys spending time with his beautiful wife Traci and their two Great Danes, Roxie and Ella. They also have a cat, a rabbit, goldfish, two poison dart frogs, and usually one or more tarantulas. Read more »