Divide a number by 3 without using *, /, +, -, % o

Question

How would you divide a number by 3 without using *, /, +, -, %, operators?

The number may be signed or unsigned.

Answer 1

Use itoa to convert to a base 3 string. Drop the last trit and convert back to base 10.

// Note: itoa is non-standard but actual implementations
// don't seem to handle negative when base != 10.
int div3(int i) {
    char str[42];
    sprintf(str, "%d", INT_MIN); // Put minus sign at str[0]
    if (i>0)                     // Remove sign if positive
        str[0] = ' ';
    itoa(abs(i), &str[1], 3);    // Put ternary absolute value starting at str[1]
    str[strlen(&str[1])] = '\0'; // Drop last digit
    return strtol(str, NULL, 3); // Read back result
}

Answer 2

Using BC Math in PHP:

<?php
    $a = 12345;
    $b = bcdiv($a, 3);   
?>

---

MySQL (it's an interview from Oracle)

> SELECT 12345 DIV 3;

---

Pascal:

a:= 12345;
b:= a div 3;

---

x86-64 assembly language:

mov  r8, 3
xor  rdx, rdx   
mov  rax, 12345
idiv r8

Answer 3

Use cblas, included as part of OS X's Accelerate framework.

[02:31:59] [william@relativity ~]$ cat div3.c
#import <stdio.h>
#import <Accelerate/Accelerate.h>

int main() {
    float multiplicand = 123456.0;
    float multiplier = 0.333333;
    printf("%f * %f == ", multiplicand, multiplier);
    cblas_sscal(1, multiplier, &multiplicand, 1);
    printf("%f\n", multiplicand);
}

[02:32:07] [william@relativity ~]$ clang div3.c -framework Accelerate -o div3 && ./div3
123456.000000 * 0.333333 == 41151.957031

Answer 4

int div3(int x)
{
  int reminder = abs(x);
  int result = 0;
  while(reminder >= 3)
  {
     result++;

     reminder--;
     reminder--;
     reminder--;
  }
  return result;
}

Answer 5

How about this approach (c#)?

private int dividedBy3(int n) {
        List<Object> a = new Object[n].ToList();
        List<Object> b = new List<object>();
        while (a.Count > 2) {
            a.RemoveRange(0, 3);
            b.Add(new Object());
        }
        return b.Count;
    }

Answer 6

Using counters is a basic solution:

int DivBy3(int num) {
    int result = 0;
    int counter = 0;
    while (1) {
        if (num == counter)       //Modulus 0
            return result;
        counter = abs(~counter);  //++counter

        if (num == counter)       //Modulus 1
            return result;
        counter = abs(~counter);  //++counter

        if (num == counter)       //Modulus 2
            return result;
        counter = abs(~counter);  //++counter

        result = abs(~result);    //++result
    }
}

It is also easy to perform a modulus function, check the comments.