NOToperation

NOT operation, also called negation or logical negation, is a unary operation that inverts the value of a boolean variable or flips bits in binary data. In boolean logic, it maps true to false and false to true. In digital electronics it is implemented as an inverter or NOT gate, consisting of a single input and a single output. The NOT gate outputs the complement of its input, typically with a small propagation delay.

Truth table: Input A, Output ¬A. If A is 0, output is 1; if A is 1, output is 0.

Boolean algebra properties: double negation, ¬(¬A) = A. De Morgan's laws: ¬(A ∨ B) = (¬A) ∧ (¬B) and ¬(A ∧ B) = (¬A) ∨ (¬B). In digital circuits, NOT is a fundamental building block used to construct other gates and to create inverted signals.

Bitwise vs logical NOT: In programming and data processing, NOT can be a logical NOT (operates on boolean values) or a bitwise NOT (flips each bit of a word). In two's complement representation, bitwise NOT of x equals -x - 1.

Symbols and language variants: logical negation is denoted by ¬ or ! in many languages; bitwise negation is denoted by ~ in languages such as C and Java.

Applications: controlling program flow (for example, if (!condition) ...), implementing inverted logic in software, and composing complex logic circuits and decoding schemes. The NOT operation is one of the core primitives in both theoretical logic and practical computing.