Java Operators : |= bitwise OR and assign example [duplicate]

by 
a |= b;

is the same as

a = (a | b);

It calculates the bitwise OR of the two operands, and assigns the result to the left operand.

To explain your example code:

for (String search : textSearch.getValue())
    matches |= field.contains(search);

I presume matches is a boolean; this means that the bitwise operators behave the same as logical operators.

On each iteration of the loop, it ORs the current value of matches with whatever is returned from field.contains(). This has the effect of setting it to true if it was already true, or if field.contains() returns true.

So, it calculates if any of the calls to field.contains(), throughout the entire loop, has returned true.

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