In logic and mathematics, the logical biconditional, also known as material biconditional or equivalence or bidirectional implication or biimplication or bientailment, is the logical connective used to conjoin two statements and to form the statement " if and only if " (often abbreviated as " iff "), where is known as the antecedent, and the consequent.
Nowadays, notations to represent equivalence include .
Propositional logic is a branch of logic. It is also called statement logic, sentential calculus, propositional calculus, sentential logic, or sometimes zeroth-order logic. Sometimes, it is called first-order propositional logic to contrast it with System F, but it should not be confused with first-order logic. It deals with propositions (which can be true or false) and relations between propositions, including the construction of arguments based on them. Compound propositions are formed by connecting propositions by logical connectives representing the truth functions of conjunction, disjunction, implication, biconditional, and negation. Some sources include other connectives, as in the table below.
Unlike first-order logic, propositional logic does not deal with non-logical objects, predicates about them, or quantifiers. However, all the machinery of propositional logic is included in first-order logic and higher-order logics. In this sense, propositional logic is the foundation of first-order logic and higher-order logic.
Exclusive or, exclusive disjunction, exclusive alternation, logical non-equivalence, or logical inequality is a logical operator whose negation is the logical biconditional. With two inputs, XOR is true if and only if the inputs differ (one is true, one is false). With multiple inputs, XOR is true if and only if the number of true inputs is odd.
It gains the name "exclusive or" because the meaning of "or" is ambiguous when both operands are true. XOR excludes that case. Some informal ways of describing XOR are "one or the other but not both", "either one or the other", and "A or B, but not A and B".
