Flip a Bit at Position | Dataford Interview Questions

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Problem

Box services may represent compact file or folder attributes as a 32-bit unsigned integer. Given a packed flags value and a zero-based bit position, flip the bit at that position and return the updated integer.

Flipping means changing 0 to 1 or 1 to 0. All other bits must remain unchanged. Use bitwise operations rather than converting the number to a string or scanning its binary representation.

Formal Specification

Implement flip_bit(flags, position):

flags is a non-negative 32-bit integer.
position is an integer from 0 through 31, where position 0 is the least significant bit.
Return a non-negative 32-bit integer containing the updated flags.

The input is always valid, and the function must not mutate external state.

Constraints

0 <= flags <= 2^32 - 1
0 <= position <= 31
The result fits in an unsigned 32-bit integer
Input values are valid, so explicit error handling is not required

Function Signature

def flip_bit(flags, position):