Binary
Binary problems are quite rare in interviews and even online assessments but it's always good to know
Corner cases
Check for overflow/underflow
Negative numbers (they use the twos complement system)
XOR behavior
The XOR (^) operator is quite commonly used to solve binary problems, these are some important properties you should familiarize yourself with:
n ^ n = 0
n ^ m == m ^ n
n ^ (m ^ k) == (n ^ m) ^ k
n ^ 0 = n
Common bitmasks
Bitmasks are commonly used to "force" a certain set of bits to be used. They are also used to constraint Python's numbers as Python doesn't use 32 bits for integers so using a manual bitmask is necessary for constraining it
Retrieving the upper 16 bits:
0xffff0000
Retrieving the lower 16 bits:
0x0000ffff
Retrieving all bits in groups of 4:
0xff00ff00
Retrieving all bits in groups of 2:
0xcccccccc
Retrieving all single bits:
0xaaaaaaaa
Techniques
Test is bit K is set:
num & (1 << k) != 0
Set bit K:
num |= (1 << k)
Turn off bit K:
num &= ~(1 << k)
Toggle bit K:
num ^= (1 << k)
Check if number is power of 2:
(num & num - 1) == 0
ornum & (-num) == num
Remove rightmost set bit:
num & (num - 1)
Swapping two variables (only positive numbers):
num1 ^= num2; num2 ^= num1; num1 ^= num2
For more information and tricks, refer to this post.
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