Count number of 1's in binary representation

Question

Efficient way to count number of 1s in the binary representation of a number in O(1) if you have enough memory to play with. This is an interview question I found on an onli

Answer 1

public static void main(String[] args) {

    int a = 3;
    int orig = a;
    int count = 0;
    while(a>0)
    {
        a = a >> 1 << 1;
        if(orig-a==1)
            count++;
        orig = a >> 1;
        a = orig;
    }

    System.out.println("Number of 1s are: "+count);
}

Answer 2

In python or any other convert to bin string then split it with '0' to get rid of 0's then combine and get the length.

len(''.join(str(bin(122011)).split('0')))-1

Answer 3

Two ways::

/* Method-1 */
int count1s(long num)
{
    int tempCount = 0;

    while(num)
    {
        tempCount += (num & 1); //inc, based on right most bit checked
        num = num >> 1;         //right shift bit by 1
    }

    return tempCount;
}

/* Method-2 */
int count1s_(int num)
{
    int tempCount = 0;

    std::string strNum = std::bitset< 16 >( num ).to_string(); // string conversion
    cout << "strNum=" << strNum << endl;
    for(int i=0; i<strNum.size(); i++)
    {
        if('1' == strNum[i])
        {
            tempCount++;
        }
    }

    return tempCount;
}

/* Method-3 (algorithmically - boost string split could be used) */
1) split the binary string over '1'.
2) count = vector (containing splits) size - 1

Usage::

    int count = 0;

    count = count1s(0b00110011);
    cout << "count(0b00110011) = " << count << endl; //4

    count = count1s(0b01110110);
    cout << "count(0b01110110) = " << count << endl;  //5

    count = count1s(0b00000000);
    cout << "count(0b00000000) = " << count << endl;  //0

    count = count1s(0b11111111);
    cout << "count(0b11111111) = " << count << endl;  //8

    count = count1s_(0b1100);
    cout << "count(0b1100) = " << count << endl;  //2

    count = count1s_(0b11111111);
    cout << "count(0b11111111) = " << count << endl;  //8

    count = count1s_(0b0);
    cout << "count(0b0) = " << count << endl;  //0

    count = count1s_(0b1);
    cout << "count(0b1) = " << count << endl;  //1

Answer 4

Below will work as well.

nofone(int x) {
  a=0;
  while(x!=0) {
    x>>=1;
    if(x & 1)
      a++;
  }
  return a;
} 

Answer 5

I had to golf this in ruby and ended up with

l=->x{x.to_s(2).count ?1}

Usage :

l[2**32-1] # returns 32

Obviously not efficient but does the trick :)

Answer 6

Please note the fact that: n&(n-1) always eliminates the least significant 1.

Hence we can write the code for calculating the number of 1's as follows:

count=0;
while(n!=0){
  n = n&(n-1);
  count++;
}
cout<<"Number of 1's in n is: "<<count;

The complexity of the program would be: number of 1's in n (which is constantly < 32).