Strange if statement

Question

I found this strange if-statement in somebody else’s code:

if variable & 1 == 0:

I don\'t understand it. It should have two

Answer 1

The & is a bitwise operator. It returns an integer with 1 bit for every bit of its two operands that are both 1, and 0 in all other places. For example:

a = 10 # 0b1010
b = 6  # 0b0110
a & b  # 0b0010

Now, if you have variable & 1, you're comparing variable against 0b1 which will only return 1 if that last digit in the binary representation is a 1, otherwise a 0.