The problem of hamming distance between two integers is a popular coding interview question. Here you will be given two integers, and you need to calculate the number of positions at which the corresponding bits of the integers are different. So, if you want to know how to solve this problem, this article is for you. This article will take you through how to solve the hamming distance problem using Python.
Hamming Distance Problem
Hamming distance between two integers is a measure of the difference between two strings of equal length. In this problem, you will be given two integers, and you need to calculate the number of positions where the corresponding bits are different. For example, look at the input and output of this problem shown below:
- Input: x = 1, y = 4 | Output: 2
In the above example, there are two integers: 1 and 4. The binary representation of 1 is 0001, and the binary representation of 4 is 0100. There are two positions where the corresponding bits of the integers are different. So the output is 2.
Calculating Hamming Distance using Python
I hope you have now understood what the problem of hamming distance means. Below is how you can solve this problem using the Python programming language:
def hammingDistance(x, y):
xor = x ^ y
dist = 0
while xor:
dist += 1
xor &= xor - 1
return dist
x = 1
y = 4
print(hammingDistance(x, y))Output: 2
So this is how you can solve the hamming distance problem using Python. You can find many more practice questions for coding interviews solved and explained using Python here.
Summary
Hamming distance between two integers is a measure of the difference between two strings of equal length. In this problem, you will be given two integers, and you need to calculate the number of positions where the corresponding bits are different. I hope you liked this article on calculating hamming distance using Python. Feel free to ask valuable questions in the comments section below.
