Hacker News Reader

XOR is the natural use of or in English. Do you want to get subs or pizza? Are you going to vote for A or B?

Logical OR is often written as ‘and or’. Do you want to see a movie and or get dinner? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/And/or

That said it’s not a universal standard and like most of English has wide regional differences.

View on HN

That or is not really a XOR becomes clear when you negate it. I don't want subs or pizza. I am not going to vote for A or B.

I would say OR is the natural use, and exclusion is implied by the context in these examples.

There are plenty of examples where A and B is treated as a negation of A or B. “Do you want A or B? Why not both?” As one example from a popular mime. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/why-not-both-why-dont-we-have...

I think whether "or" means inclusive or or xor is in fact ambiguous and determined by context in English. I think if you as a megacorp write ambiguous contracts and try to enforce them against your employees, you do not deserve a sympathetic interpretation from the courts.

In fact such interpretations of contract ambiguities (in favor of weaker party) are even codified in some countries, most notably the whole of EU [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contra_proferentem

Reply on news.ycombinator.com