Test Your EQ (Engineering Quotient)

EQ #2

10/14/2019
Written by Circuit Cellar Staff

What advantage does this function have over a more “conventional” implementation?

int foo (int n)
{
  int k = 0;
  int t;
  while (t = n & -n) {
    ++k;
    n &= ~t;
  }
  return k;
}

On average, this function is faster. It only iterates as many times as there are ones in the argument. Conventional algorithms usually iterate over all of the bits in the argument.

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