XOR Swap Algorithm - Reasons For Use in Practice

Reasons For Use in Practice

In most practical scenarios, the trivial swap algorithm using a temporary register is more efficient. Limited situations in which XOR swapping may be practical include:

  • On a processor where the instruction set encoding permits the XOR swap to be encoded in a smaller number of bytes;
  • In a region with high register pressure, it may allow the register allocator to avoid spilling a register.
  • In microcontrollers where available RAM is very limited.

Because these situations are rare, most optimizing compilers do not generate XOR swap code.

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