Critical Thinking Questions Case 2 Robin thinks that she has a good handle on the use of compound operators but she wants to do a couple of sample problems just to make certain. In both of the problems below, Robin assumes that intResult = 24. When Robin correctly calculates intResult ^= 2, what value does she get?
A) 22
B) 24
C) 48
D) 576

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

The ^= operator is a bitwise XOR assignment operator. When intResult ^= 2 is calculated, it performs a bitwise XOR between intResult (24) and 2. The binary representation of 24 is 11000 and for 2 is 00010. XORing these gives 11010, which is 26 in decimal. However, the question seems to have a mistake as none of the options match 26. If we consider the operation as intResult raised to the power of 2 (which is not what ^= does), it would be 24^2 = 576, which matches option D.

Critical Thinking Questions Case 2 Robin Thinks That She Has