求两个整数的汉明距离 hamming distance

Leetcode 461 两个整数之间的汉明距离是该两个数之间不同的位数。 给定两个整数x和y，计算汉明距离。问题也可以理解为对于两个整数m和n, 需要改变m的二进制多少位才能得到n:

/** Use Brian Kernighan's way to count bits */
public int hammingDistance(int x, int y) {
    x = x ^ y;
    y = 0;
    while(x != 0){
        y++;
        x &= x - 1;
    }
    return y;
}

public class Solution {
    public int hammingDistance(int x, int y) {
        return Integer.bitCount(x ^ y);
    }
}

同样用到Brian Kernighan算法：

Lets say that the bit at index n is 1 and that the bits in indexes 0 up to n-1 are all 0 (we’ll use little endianess - so index 0 is 1, index 1 is 2, index 2 is 4, index 3 is 8 and so on).

v-1 subtracts from index 0 - but it’s 0, so it converts it to 1 and subtracts from index 1 - but it’s also 0, so it converts it to 1 and subtracts from index 2 - and so on until we reach index n. Since index n is 1 it can subtract from it and turn it to 0 - and there it stops: 1101000 - 1 = 1100111

So, v-1 is like v except there are n 0 that became 1 and one 1 that became 0. In v & v - 1 all the other bits remain as is, the n zeros that where turned to ones remain 0 (because 0 & 1 == 0), and the one 1 that was turned to 0 turns to 0(because 1 & 0 == 0). So overall - only a single bit was changed in the iteration, and this change was from 1 to 0: 1101000 & 1100111 = 1100000