How to check if a number is a power of 2

Question

Today I needed a simple algorithm for checking if a number is a power of 2.

The algorithm needs to be:

1. Simple
2. Correct for any ulong

Answer 1

A number is a power of 2 if it contains only 1 set bit. We can use this property and the generic function countSetBits to find if a number is power of 2 or not.

This is a C++ program:

int countSetBits(int n)
{
        int c = 0;
        while(n)
        {
                c += 1;
                n  = n & (n-1);
        }
        return c;
}

bool isPowerOfTwo(int n)
{        
        return (countSetBits(n)==1);
}
int main()
{
    int i, val[] = {0,1,2,3,4,5,15,16,22,32,38,64,70};
    for(i=0; i

We dont need to check explicitly for 0 being a Power of 2, as it returns False for 0 as well.

OUTPUT

Num:0   Set Bits:0   is power of two: 0
Num:1   Set Bits:1   is power of two: 1
Num:2   Set Bits:1   is power of two: 1
Num:3   Set Bits:2   is power of two: 0
Num:4   Set Bits:1   is power of two: 1
Num:5   Set Bits:2   is power of two: 0
Num:15  Set Bits:4   is power of two: 0
Num:16  Set Bits:1   is power of two: 1
Num:22  Set Bits:3   is power of two: 0
Num:32  Set Bits:1   is power of two: 1
Num:38  Set Bits:3   is power of two: 0
Num:64  Set Bits:1   is power of two: 1
Num:70  Set Bits:3   is power of two: 0