191. Number of 1 Bits

Write a function that takes an unsigned integer and returns the number of ’1' bits it has (also known as the Hamming weight).

For example, the 32-bit integer ’11' has binary representation 00000000000000000000000000001011, so the function should return 3.

Solution:

n & (n - 1) will eliminate a 1 in binary representation.

Therefore we keep doing this until n becomes zero, which means no more 1s in binary representation.



Code:

public class Solution {
    // you need to treat n as an unsigned value
    public int hammingWeight(int n) {
        int count = 0;
        while (n != 0) {
            n = n & (n - 1);
            count++;
        }
        return count;
    }
}