LeetCode as Procrastination

October 5, 2024

We're solving another LeetCode problem today instead of adding a new project to my portfolio. This one is focused on bit manipulation. Let's dive in.

The Problem

Today's problem is 191. Number of 1 bits. The problem is as follows: Write a function that takes the binary representation of a positive integer and returns the number of set bits it has (also known as the Hamming weight).

The Solution

Let's answer using the UMPIRE method:

• Understand
  • We are given a positive integer, and we are to count the number of 1 bits of the number in bina.
• Match
  • We can match this problem to a bit manipulation problem or an array looping problem.
• Plan
  • We can write a function which casts the number to binary, then a string, and finally counts the number of 1's using a loop.
• Implement

Copy
1def countBits(self, n: int) -> int:
2        b = bin(n)
3        s = str(b)[2:]
4        count = 0
5        for bit in s:
6            if bit == '1':
7                count += 1
8        return count

• Review
  • The code is clean and concise. We used descriptive variable names.
  • We can test our code using the examples provided.
  • n = 4
    • b = '0b0100'
    • s = '0100'
    • count = 1

Copy
1def test_reverseBits(self):
2        assert self.countBits(4) == 1
3        assert self.reverseBits(3) == 2

• Evaluate
  • Our code runs in O(n) time complexity due to our loop through the string.
  • Our space complexity is O(1) as we use the same amount of space regardless of input size.

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