Check if one integer is an integer power of another
You'd do better to repeatedly divide y into x. The first time you get a non-zero remainder you know x is not an integer power of y.
while (x%y == 0) x = x / y
return x == 1
This deals with your odd/even point on the first iteration.
This looks for the exponent in O(log N) steps:
#define MAX_POWERS 100
int is_power(unsigned long x, unsigned long y) {
int i;
unsigned long powers[MAX_POWERS];
unsigned long last;
last = powers[0] = y;
for (i = 1; last < x; i++) {
last *= last; // note that last * last can overflow here!
powers[i] = last;
}
while (x >= y) {
unsigned long top = powers[--i];
if (x >= top) {
unsigned long x1 = x / top;
if (x1 * top != x) return 0;
x = x1;
}
}
return (x == 1);
}
Negative numbers are not handled by this code, but it can be done easyly with some conditional code when i = 1
It means logy(x) should be an integer. Don't need any loop. in O(1) time
public class PowerTest {
public static boolean isPower(int x, int y) {
double d = Math.log(Math.abs(x)) / Math.log(Math.abs(y));
if ((x > 0 && y > 0) || (x < 0 && y < 0)) {
if (d == (int) d) {
return true;
} else {
return false;
}
} else if (x > 0 && y < 0) {
if ((int) d % 2 == 0) {
return true;
} else {
return false;
}
} else {
return false;
}
}
/**
* @param args
*/
public static void main(String[] args) {
System.out.println(isPower(-32, -2));
System.out.println(isPower(2, 8));
System.out.println(isPower(8, 12));
System.out.println(isPower(9, 9));
System.out.println(isPower(-16, 2));
System.out.println(isPower(-8, -2));
System.out.println(isPower(16, -2));
System.out.println(isPower(8, -2));
}
}