Question

I tried searching using Google Search and Stack Overflow, but it didn’t show up any results. I have seen this in opensource library code:

Notification notification = new Notification(icon, tickerText, when);
notification.defaults |= Notification.DEFAULT_SOUND;
notification.defaults |= Notification.DEFAULT_VIBRATE;

What does “|=” ( pipe equal operator ) mean?

Answer 1

|= reads the same way as +=.

notification.defaults |= Notification.DEFAULT_SOUND;

is the same as

notification.defaults = notification.defaults | Notification.DEFAULT_SOUND;

where | is the bit-wise OR operator.

All operators are referenced here.

A bit-wise operator is used because, as is frequent, those constants enable an int to carry flags.

If you look at those constants, you’ll see that they’re in powers of two :

public static final int DEFAULT_SOUND = 1;
public static final int DEFAULT_VIBRATE = 2; // is the same than 1<<1 or 10 in binary
public static final int DEFAULT_LIGHTS = 4; // is the same than 1<<2 or 100 in binary

So you can use bit-wise OR to add flags

int myFlags = DEFAULT_SOUND | DEFAULT_VIBRATE; // same as 001 | 010, producing 011

so

myFlags |= DEFAULT_LIGHTS;

simply means we add a flag.

And symmetrically, we test a flag is set using & :

boolean hasVibrate = (DEFAULT_VIBRATE & myFlags) != 0;