Fastest way to determine if an integer's square root is an integer

Question

I\'m looking for the fastest way to determine if a long value is a perfect square (i.e. its square root is another integer):

1. I\'ve done it the ea

Answer 1

I'm pretty late to the party, but I hope to provide a better answer; shorter and (assuming my benchmark is correct) also much faster.

long goodMask; // 0xC840C04048404040 computed below
{
    for (int i=0; i<64; ++i) goodMask |= Long.MIN_VALUE >>> (i*i);
}

public boolean isSquare(long x) {
    // This tests if the 6 least significant bits are right.
    // Moving the to be tested bit to the highest position saves us masking.
    if (goodMask << x >= 0) return false;
    final int numberOfTrailingZeros = Long.numberOfTrailingZeros(x);
    // Each square ends with an even number of zeros.
    if ((numberOfTrailingZeros & 1) != 0) return false;
    x >>= numberOfTrailingZeros;
    // Now x is either 0 or odd.
    // In binary each odd square ends with 001.
    // Postpone the sign test until now; handle zero in the branch.
    if ((x&7) != 1 | x <= 0) return x == 0;
    // Do it in the classical way.
    // The correctness is not trivial as the conversion from long to double is lossy!
    final long tst = (long) Math.sqrt(x);
    return tst * tst == x;
}

The first test catches most non-squares quickly. It uses a 64-item table packed in a long, so there's no array access cost (indirection and bounds checks). For a uniformly random long, there's a 81.25% probability of ending here.

The second test catches all numbers having an odd number of twos in their factorization. The method Long.numberOfTrailingZeros is very fast as it gets JIT-ed into a single i86 instruction.

After dropping the trailing zeros, the third test handles numbers ending with 011, 101, or 111 in binary, which are no perfect squares. It also cares about negative numbers and also handles 0.

The final test falls back to double arithmetic. As double has only 53 bits mantissa, the conversion from long to double includes rounding for big values. Nonetheless, the test is correct (unless the proof is wrong).

Trying to incorporate the mod255 idea wasn't successful.

Answer 2

You'll have to do some benchmarking. The best algorithm will depend on the distribution of your inputs.

Your algorithm may be nearly optimal, but you might want to do a quick check to rule out some possibilities before calling your square root routine. For example, look at the last digit of your number in hex by doing a bit-wise "and." Perfect squares can only end in 0, 1, 4, or 9 in base 16, So for 75% of your inputs (assuming they are uniformly distributed) you can avoid a call to the square root in exchange for some very fast bit twiddling.

Kip benchmarked the following code implementing the hex trick. When testing numbers 1 through 100,000,000, this code ran twice as fast as the original.

public final static boolean isPerfectSquare(long n)
{
    if (n < 0)
        return false;

    switch((int)(n & 0xF))
    {
    case 0: case 1: case 4: case 9:
        long tst = (long)Math.sqrt(n);
        return tst*tst == n;

    default:
        return false;
    }
}

When I tested the analogous code in C++, it actually ran slower than the original. However, when I eliminated the switch statement, the hex trick once again make the code twice as fast.

int isPerfectSquare(int n)
{
    int h = n & 0xF;  // h is the last hex "digit"
    if (h > 9)
        return 0;
    // Use lazy evaluation to jump out of the if statement as soon as possible
    if (h != 2 && h != 3 && h != 5 && h != 6 && h != 7 && h != 8)
    {
        int t = (int) floor( sqrt((double) n) + 0.5 );
        return t*t == n;
    }
    return 0;
}

Eliminating the switch statement had little effect on the C# code.

Answer 3

Just for the record, another approach is to use the prime decomposition. If every factor of the decomposition is even, then the number is a perfect square. So what you want is to see if a number can be decomposed as a product of squares of prime numbers. Of course, you don't need to obtain such a decomposition, just to see if it exists.

First build a table of squares of prime numbers which are lower than 2^32. This is far smaller than a table of all integers up to this limit.

A solution would then be like this:

boolean isPerfectSquare(long number)
{
    if (number < 0) return false;
    if (number < 2) return true;

    for (int i = 0; ; i++)
    {
        long square = squareTable[i];
        if (square > number) return false;
        while (number % square == 0)
        {
            number /= square;
        }
        if (number == 1) return true;
    }
}

I guess it's a bit cryptic. What it does is checking in every step that the square of a prime number divide the input number. If it does then it divides the number by the square as long as it is possible, to remove this square from the prime decomposition. If by this process, we came to 1, then the input number was a decomposition of square of prime numbers. If the square becomes larger than the number itself, then there is no way this square, or any larger squares, can divide it, so the number can not be a decomposition of squares of prime numbers.

Given nowadays' sqrt done in hardware and the need to compute prime numbers here, I guess this solution is way slower. But it should give better results than solution with sqrt which won't work over 2^54, as says mrzl in his answer.

Answer 4

Considering for general bit length (though I have used specific type here), I tried to design simplistic algo as below. Simple and obvious check for 0,1,2 or <0 is required initially. Following is simple in sense that it doesn't try to use any existing maths functions. Most of the operator can be replaced with bit-wise operators. I haven't tested with any bench mark data though. I'm neither expert at maths or computer algorithm design in particular, I would love to see you pointing out problem. I know there is lots of improvement chances there.

int main()
{
    unsigned int c1=0 ,c2 = 0;  
    unsigned int x = 0;  
    unsigned int p = 0;  
    int k1 = 0;  
    scanf("%d",&p);  
    if(p % 2 == 0) {  
        x = p/2; 
    }  
    else {  
        x = (p/2) +1;  
    }  
    while(x) 
    {
        if((x*x) > p) {  
            c1 = x;  
            x = x/2; 
        }else {  
            c2 = x;  
            break;  
        }  
    }  
    if((p%2) != 0)  
        c2++;

    while(c2 < c1) 
    {  
        if((c2 * c2 ) == p) {  
            k1 = 1;  
            break;  
        }  
        c2++; 
    }  
    if(k1)  
        printf("\n Perfect square for %d", c2);  
    else  
        printf("\n Not perfect but nearest to :%d :", c2);  
    return 0;  
}  

Answer 5

This a rework from decimal to binary of the old Marchant calculator algorithm (sorry, I don't have a reference), in Ruby, adapted specifically for this question:

def isexactsqrt(v)
    value = v.abs
    residue = value
    root = 0
    onebit = 1
    onebit <<= 8 while (onebit < residue)
    onebit >>= 2 while (onebit > residue)
    while (onebit > 0)
        x = root + onebit
        if (residue >= x) then
            residue -= x
            root = x + onebit
        end
        root >>= 1
        onebit >>= 2
    end
    return (residue == 0)
end

Here's a workup of something similar (please don't vote me down for coding style/smells or clunky O/O - it's the algorithm that counts, and C++ is not my home language). In this case, we're looking for residue == 0:

#include <iostream>  

using namespace std;  
typedef unsigned long long int llint;

class ISqrt {           // Integer Square Root
    llint value;        // Integer whose square root is required
    llint root;         // Result: floor(sqrt(value))
    llint residue;      // Result: value-root*root
    llint onebit, x;    // Working bit, working value

public:

    ISqrt(llint v = 2) {    // Constructor
        Root(v);            // Take the root 
    };

    llint Root(llint r) {   // Resets and calculates new square root
        value = r;          // Store input
        residue = value;    // Initialise for subtracting down
        root = 0;           // Clear root accumulator

        onebit = 1;                 // Calculate start value of counter
        onebit <<= (8*sizeof(llint)-2);         // Set up counter bit as greatest odd power of 2 
        while (onebit > residue) {onebit >>= 2; };  // Shift down until just < value

        while (onebit > 0) {
            x = root ^ onebit;          // Will check root+1bit (root bit corresponding to onebit is always zero)
            if (residue >= x) {         // Room to subtract?
                residue -= x;           // Yes - deduct from residue
                root = x + onebit;      // and step root
            };
            root >>= 1;
            onebit >>= 2;
        };
        return root;                    
    };
    llint Residue() {           // Returns residue from last calculation
        return residue;                 
    };
};

int main() {
    llint big, i, q, r, v, delta;
    big = 0; big = (big-1);         // Kludge for "big number"
    ISqrt b;                            // Make q sqrt generator
    for ( i = big; i > 0 ; i /= 7 ) {   // for several numbers
        q = b.Root(i);                  // Get the square root
        r = b.Residue();                // Get the residue
        v = q*q+r;                      // Recalc original value
        delta = v-i;                    // And diff, hopefully 0
        cout << i << ": " << q << " ++ " << r << " V: " << v << " Delta: " << delta << "\n";
    };
    return 0;
};

Answer 6

The following simplification of maaartinus's solution appears to shave a few percentage points off the runtime, but I'm not good enough at benchmarking to produce a benchmark I can trust:

long goodMask; // 0xC840C04048404040 computed below
{
    for (int i=0; i<64; ++i) goodMask |= Long.MIN_VALUE >>> (i*i);
}

public boolean isSquare(long x) {
    // This tests if the 6 least significant bits are right.
    // Moving the to be tested bit to the highest position saves us masking.
    if (goodMask << x >= 0) return false;
    // Remove an even number of trailing zeros, leaving at most one.
    x >>= (Long.numberOfTrailingZeros(x) & (-2);
    // Repeat the test on the 6 least significant remaining bits.
    if (goodMask << x >= 0 | x <= 0) return x == 0;
    // Do it in the classical way.
    // The correctness is not trivial as the conversion from long to double is lossy!
    final long tst = (long) Math.sqrt(x);
    return tst * tst == x;
}

It would be worth checking how omitting the first test,

if (goodMask << x >= 0) return false;

would affect performance.