| MATLAB Function Reference | |
Syntax
A & B A | B ~A
Description
The symbols &, |, and ~ are the logical operators and, or, and not. They work element-wise on arrays, with 0 representing logical false (F), and anything nonzero representing logical true (T). The & operator does a logical and, the| operator does a logical or, and ~A complements the elements of A. The function xor(A,B) implements the exclusive or operation. Truth tables for these operators and functions follow.
| Inputs | and |
or |
xor |
not |
|
A |
B |
A&B |
A|B |
xor(A,B) |
~A |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
1 |
0 |
1 |
0 |
1 |
1 |
1 |
1 |
0 |
0 |
1 |
1 |
0 |
1 |
1 |
1 |
1 |
0 |
0 |
The precedence for the logical operators with respect to each other is:
not has the highest precedence.and and or have equal precedence, and are evaluated from left to right.Remarks
The logical operators have M-file function equivalents, as shown:
| and |
|
and(A,B) |
| or |
|
or(A,B) |
| not |
|
not(A) |
Precedence of & and |
MATLAB's left to right execution precedence causes a|b&c to be equivalent to (a|b)&c. However, in most programming languages, a|b&c is equivalent to a|(b&c), that is, & takes precedence over |. To ensure compatibility with future versions of MATLAB, you should use parentheses to explicity specify the intended precedence of statements containing combinations of & and |.
Examples
Here are two examples that illustrate the precedence of the logical operators to each other:
1 | 0 & 0 = 0 0 & 0 | 1 = 1
See Also
The relational operators: <, <=, >, >=, ==, ~=ì
| | Relational Operators < > <= >= == ~= | Special Characters [ ] ( ) {} = ' . ... , ; % ! | |