XOR means eXclusive Or. It is a Boolean operation which takes binary inputs and combines them for a single digital output.

The idea is that the inputs are mutually exclusive, they must have different values for the output to be true. This can detect if two inputs are different.

An XOR gate is explicitly a 2 input device, who’s output is only true if and only if the inputs are different.

Look at the Truth Table:

Input Output
A B C
0 0 0
0 1 1
1 0 1
1 1 0

XOR Gate