Position of least significant bit that is set

Question

I am looking for an efficient way to determine the position of the least significant bit that is set in an integer, e.g. for 0x0FF0 it would be 4.

A trivial impleme

Answer 1

unsigned GetLowestBitPos(unsigned value)
{
    if (value & 1) return 1;
    if (value & 2) return 2;
    if (value & 4) return 3;
    if (value & 8) return 4;
    if (value & 16) return 5;
    if (value & 32) return 6;
    if (value & 64) return 7;
    if (value & 128) return 8;
    if (value & 256) return 9;
    if (value & 512) return 10;
    if (value & 1024) return 11;
    if (value & 2048) return 12;
    if (value & 4096) return 13;
    if (value & 8192) return 14;
    if (value & 16384) return 15;
    if (value & 32768) return 16;
    if (value & 65536) return 17;
    if (value & 131072) return 18;
    if (value & 262144) return 19;
    if (value & 524288) return 20;
    if (value & 1048576) return 21;
    if (value & 2097152) return 22;
    if (value & 4194304) return 23;
    if (value & 8388608) return 24;
    if (value & 16777216) return 25;
    if (value & 33554432) return 26;
    if (value & 67108864) return 27;
    if (value & 134217728) return 28;
    if (value & 268435456) return 29;
    if (value & 536870912) return 30;
    return 31;
}

50% of all numbers will return on the first line of code.

75% of all numbers will return on the first 2 lines of code.

87% of all numbers will return in the first 3 lines of code.

94% of all numbers will return in the first 4 lines of code.

97% of all numbers will return in the first 5 lines of code.

etc.

I think people that are complaining on how inefficient the worst case scenario for this code don't understand how rare that condition will happen.