How to do an integer log2() in C++?

Question

In the C++ standard libraries I found only a floating point log method. Now I use log to find the level of an index in a binary tree ( floor(2log(index)) ).

Code (C++):

int targetlevel = int(log(index)/log(2));

I am afraid that for some of the edge elements (the elements with value 2^n) log will return n-1.999999999999 instead of n.0. Is this fear correct? How can I modify my statement so that it always will return a correct answer?

Answer 1

int log2(int x) {
    return sizeof(int)*8 - 1 - __builtin_clz(x);
}

assuming your x is > 0

Answer 2

Base-2 Integer Logarithm

Here is what I do for 64-bit unsigned integers. This calculates the floor of the base-2 logarithm, which is equivalent to the index of the most significant bit. This method is smokingly fast for large numbers because it uses an unrolled loop that executes always in log₂64 = 6 steps.

Essentially, what it does is subtracts away progressively smaller squares in the sequence { 0 ≤ k ≤ 5: 2^(2^k) } = { 2³², 2¹⁶, 2⁸, 2⁴, 2², 2¹ } = { 4294967296, 65536, 256, 16, 4, 2, 1 } and sums the exponents k of the subtracted values.

int uint64_log2(uint64_t n)
{
  #define S(k) if (n >= (UINT64_C(1) << k)) { i += k; n >>= k; }

  int i = -(n == 0); S(32); S(16); S(8); S(4); S(2); S(1); return i;

  #undef S
}

Note that this returns –1 if given the invalid input of 0 (which is what the initial -(n == 0) is checking for). If you never expect to invoke it with n == 0, you could substitute int i = 0; for the initializer and add assert(n != 0); at entry to the function.

Base-10 Integer Logarithm

Base-10 integer logarithms can be calculated using similarly — with the largest square to test being 10¹⁶ because log₁₀2⁶⁴ ≅ 19.2659...

int uint64_log10(uint64_t n)
{
  #define S(k, m) if (n >= UINT64_C(m)) { i += k; n /= UINT64_C(m); }

  int i = -(n == 0);
  S(16,10000000000000000); S(8,100000000); S(4,10000); S(2,100); S(1,10);
  return i;

  #undef S
}

Answer 3

I've never had any problem with floating-point accuracy on the formula you're using (and a quick check of numbers from 1 to 2³¹ - 1 found no errors), but if you're worried, you can use this function instead, which returns the same results and is about 66% faster in my tests:

int HighestBit(int i){
    if(i == 0)
        return -1;

    int bit = 31;
    if((i & 0xFFFFFF00) == 0){
        i <<= 24;
        bit = 7;
    }else if((i & 0xFFFF0000) == 0){
        i <<= 16;
        bit = 15;
    }else if((i & 0xFF000000) == 0){
        i <<= 8;
        bit = 23;
    }

    if((i & 0xF0000000) == 0){
        i <<= 4;
        bit -= 4;
    }

    while((i & 0x80000000) == 0){
        i <<= 1;
        bit--;
    }

    return bit; 
}

Answer 4

If you're using C++11 you can make this a constexpr function:

constexpr std::uint32_t log2(std::uint32_t n)
{
    return (n > 1) ? 1 + log2(n >> 1) : 0;
}

Answer 5

There are similar answers above. This answer

1. Works with 64 bit numbers
2. Lets you choose the type of rounding and
3. Includes test/sample code

Functions:

    static int floorLog2(int64_t x)
    { 
      assert(x > 0);
      return 63 - __builtin_clzl(x);
    }

    static int ceilLog2(int64_t x)
    {
      if (x == 1)
        // On my system __builtin_clzl(0) returns 63.  64 would make more sense   
        // and would be more consistent.  According to stackoverflow this result  
        // can get even stranger and you should just avoid __builtin_clzl(0).     
        return 0;
      else
        return floorLog2(x-1) + 1;
    }

Test Code:

for (int i = 1; i < 35; i++)
  std::cout<<"floorLog2("<<i<<") = "<<floorLog2(i)
           <<", ceilLog2("<<i<<") = "<<ceilLog2(i)<<std::endl;

Answer 6

If you are on a recent-ish x86 or x86-64 platform (and you probably are), use the bsr instruction which will return the position of the highest set bit in an unsigned integer. It turns out that this is exactly the same as log2(). Here is a short C or C++ function that invokes bsr using inline ASM:

#include <stdint.h>
static inline uint32_t log2(const uint32_t x) {
  uint32_t y;
  asm ( "\tbsr %1, %0\n"
      : "=r"(y)
      : "r" (x)
  );
  return y;
}