Coding Exercise – Implement Pow(x, n) – C++ – Online Judge

Source: http://oj.leetcode.com/problems/powx-n/

Implement Pow(x, n) which computes The given parameter x is a 64-bit double and n is a 32-bit integer.

The quick solution may be so obvious, using bruteforce, iterate n times that multiplies x and gives a straightforward result.

class Solution {
public:
    double pow(double x, int n) {
        // brute force - TOO SLOW
        double r = 1;
        for (int i = 0; i < n; i ++) r *= x;
        return r;
    }
};

However, this yields TIME LIMIT EXCEEDED on inputs like because the exponential is very large.

How to improve this? One optimisation hint is base on the fact that:

if n is even. For example,

How about n is odd, we can just multiply one time the base x.

So, each iteration, we square the base x and reduces the exponential n to its half, which will give an algorithm complexity of log(2^n).

We can also use binary logic and operation x & 1 == 1 to check if x is odd rather than x % 2 == 1 which I think is a bit slower than the first one.

class Solution {
public:
    double pow(double x, int n) {
        //  check the sign of n
        bool plus = n >= 0;
        n = plus ? n : -n;
        double r = 1;
        while (n > 0) {
            // if odd
            if (n & 1 == 1) {
                r *= x;
            }
            // reduce the exponential to its half
            n /= 2;
            // square the base
            x *= x;
        }
        // if n < 0, should return 1.0/x^n
        return plus ? r : 1.0 / r;
    }
};

–EOF (The Ultimate Computing & Technology Blog) —