How to check if a number is a power of 2

Question

Today I needed a simple algorithm for checking if a number is a power of 2.

The algorithm needs to be:

1. Simple
2. Correct for any ulong

Answer 1

After posting the question I thought of the following solution:

We need to check if exactly one of the binary digits is one. So we simply shift the number right one digit at a time, and return true if it equals 1. If at any point we come by an odd number ((number & 1) == 1), we know the result is false. This proved (using a benchmark) slightly faster than the original method for (large) true values and much faster for false or small values.

private static bool IsPowerOfTwo(ulong number)
{
    while (number != 0)
    {
        if (number == 1)
            return true;

        if ((number & 1) == 1)
            // number is an odd number and not 1 - so it's not a power of two.
            return false;

        number = number >> 1;
    }
    return false;
}

---

Of course, Greg's solution is much better.