The Hamming Distance Implementation in Javascript

The Hamming Distance is the number of different symbols between two strings/numbers (equal length). It can be also considered as the number of changes required to convert from one input to another.

If the inputs are integers, we can write a quick implementation in Javascript like this:

const hamming_distance = (a, b) => {
    let d = 0;
    let h = a ^ b;
    while (h > 0) {
        d ++;
        h &= h - 1;
    }
    return d;
}

The a ^ b calculates the XOR which is the difference in bit representation of two integers and h & (h – 1) removes the LSB (least significant bit). For example, 11100 & 11011 = 11000. 10001 & 10000 = 10000.

You can test the above JS code to compute the hamming distances between two integers in this online JS editor.

NodeJs / Javascript

Hamming Weight / Hamming Distance Algorithms

Here are the posts related to Hamming Distance (XOR, The number of different bits):

• A faster approach to count set bits in a 32-bit integer
• Teaching Kids Programming – Minimum Bit Flips to Convert Number (Hamming Distance)
• GoLang: Compute the Hamming Distance
• How to Sort List by Hamming Weight in C++?
• Teaching Kids Programming – Compute the Hamming Distance of Two Integers
• Compute the Total Hamming Distance between All Pairs of Integers
• The Hamming Distance Implementation in Javascript
• Hamming Distance between Two Integers
• Compute Number of 1’s Bits in C/C++
• Teaching Kids Programming – Sort List by Hamming Weight

–EOF (The Ultimate Computing & Technology Blog) —