Statement▼
You are given an integer n. Your goal is to reduce it to
Flip the rightmost bit (bit at position
0 ) ofn.Flip the bit at position
i (fori>0 ) only if the bit at positioni−1 is1 and all bits from positioni−2 down to0 are set to0 .
Determine and return the minimum number of these operations required to reduce n to
Constraints:
0≤ n≤109
Solution
First, we need to analyze how binary numbers can be manipulated using the two allowed operations:
Operation 1: Flip the rightmost (0th) bit at any time.
Operation 2: Flip the bit at position
i (fori>0 ) only if the bit at positioni−1 is1 and all bits from positioni−2 down to0 are set to0 .
Now, to understand the core of this problem, let’s dive into the logical analysis of this problem to reach the solution:
Analyze numbers with exactly one bit set (powers of 2)
Let’s start with the simplest case numbers with exactly one bit set (powers of two) such as