Bit Manipulation

Basic operation
Basic use case
Interview Questions

How Integer is stored in Memory

Integer -> 4 bytes -> 32 bits

Long -> 8 bytes -> 64 bits

Boolean/Char -> 1 byte

Two's complement

Basic Operation

Bitwise NOT
- ~0111 = 1000
Bitwise OR
- 0101 | 1010 = 1111
Bitwise AND
- 0101 & 1100 = 0100
Bitwise XOR
- 0101 ^ 0011 = 0110

Basic Operation

Bitwise SHIFT
- 0001 << 3 = 1000
- 1100 >> 1 = 1110 -- arithmetic
- 1100 >>> 1 = 0110 -- logical

Basic use case (Tricks)

Even & Odd
- n & 1 == 1 ? Odd : Even
Double
- a / 2 = a >> 1;
- a * (2^m) = a << m;
Negative number
- a = 101101100
- -a = 010010011 + 1 = 010010100
- Bit NOT on every bit and then plus 1.

Basic use case (Tricks)

Specific bit operation
- Get kth bit: (a >> k) & 1
- Set kth bit 0: a = a & ~(1 << k)
- Set kth bit 1: a = a | (1 << k)

Basic use case (Tricks)

XOR
- a ^ a = 0
- a ^ 0 = a

Interview Questions

Bit operation
- Single Number
- Number of 1 Bits
- Reverse Bits
Reduce storage & improve efficiency
- Combination

Single Number

Given an array of integers, every element appears twice except for one. Find that single one.

public int singleNumber(int[] A) {
    for (int i = 1; i < A.length; i++) {
        A[i] ^= A[i-1];
    }
    return A[A.length-1];
}

Single Number

Given an array of integers, every element appears twice except for one. Find that single one.

    def singleNumber(self, A: List[int]) -> int:
        for i in range(1, len(A)):
            A[i] ^= A[i-1]
        return A[-1]

Number of 1 Bits

Write a function that takes an unsigned integer and returns the number of ’1' bits it has. (also known as the Hamming weight)

public int hammingWeight(int n) {
    int result = 0;
    for (int i = 0; i < 32; i++) {
        result += n & 1;
        n >>= 1;
    }
    return result;
}

Number of 1 Bits

Write a function that takes an unsigned integer and returns the number of ’1' bits it has. (also known as the Hamming weight)

    def hammingWeight(self, n: int) -> int:
        result = 0
        for i in range(32):
            result += n & 1
            n >>= 1
        return result

Bit Manipulation