The difference between 'and' and '&' in Python

Asked Aug 04 '23 at 14:29

Active Aug 04 '23 at 14:30

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I am reviewing the logical operators in Python. What's the difference between the 'and' operator and the '&' operator?

It seems that '&' is doing a bitwise AND, like 10(1010) & 7(0111) result in 2(0010). But how does the 'and' actually work? Why does 10 & 7 result in 7 in this case? Many thanks in advance!

asked Aug 04 '23 at 14:29

Charles Chen

1

Please search before asking… – mozway Aug 04 '23 at 14:30
`10 & 7` is certainly not `7`. – tadman Aug 04 '23 at 14:30
PSA: [Wikipedia exists](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boolean_algebra). – tadman Aug 04 '23 at 14:31
@tadman given the correct explanation in the sentence before I assume OP meant `10 and 7` – mozway Aug 04 '23 at 14:31
@mozway I see that in a correction now. – tadman Aug 04 '23 at 14:32
The behaviour of the boolean operators is defined here: https://docs.python.org/3/library/stdtypes.html#boolean-operations-and-or-not. Note that `x and y` is documented as meaning *"if x is false, then x, else y"*: that's why `10 and 7` results in 7. – slothrop Aug 04 '23 at 14:49

The difference between 'and' and '&' in Python

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