What does O(log n) mean exactly?

Question

I am learning about Big O Notation running times and amortized times. I understand the notion of O(n) linear time, meaning that the size of the input affects the g

Answer 1

Algorithms in the Divide and Conquer paradigm are of complexity O(logn). One example here, calculate your own power function,

int power(int x, unsigned int y)
{
    int temp;
    if( y == 0)
        return 1;
    temp = power(x, y/2);
    if (y%2 == 0)
        return temp*temp;
    else
        return x*temp*temp;
}

from http://www.geeksforgeeks.org/write-a-c-program-to-calculate-powxn/