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Programming-Idioms

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  • Go

Idiom #32 Integer exponentiation by squaring

Create function exp which calculates (fast) the value x power n.
x and n are non-negative integers.

func exp(x, n int) int {
	switch {
	case n == 0:
		return 1
	case n == 1:
		return x
	case n%2 == 0:
		return exp(x*x, n/2)
	default:
		return x * exp(x*x, (n-1)/2)
	}
}

Warning: type int quickly overflows
unsigned int exp(unsigned int x,unsigned int n)
{
    if(n==0)
    {
        return 1;
    }
    if(n==1)
    {
        return x;
    }
    if(!(n%2))
    {
        return exp(x*x,n/2);
    }
    return x*exp(x*x,(n-1)/2);
}

New implementation...