Average of 3 long integers

Question

I have 3 very large signed integers.

long x = long.MaxValue;
long y = long.MaxValue - 1;
long z = long.MaxValue - 2;

I want to calculate th

Answer 1

Patrick Hofman has posted a great solution. But if needed it can still be implemented in several other ways. Using the algorithm here I have another solution. If implemented carefully it may be faster than the multiple divisions in systems with slow hardware divisors. It can be further optimized by using divide by constants technique from hacker's delight

public class int128_t {
    private int H;
    private long L;

    public int128_t(int h, long l)
    {
        H = h;
        L = l;
    }

    public int128_t add(int128_t a)
    {
        int128_t s;
        s.L = L + a.L;
        s.H = H + a.H + (s.L < a.L);
        return b;
    }

    private int128_t rshift2()  // right shift 2
    {
        int128_t r;
        r.H = H >> 2;
        r.L = (L >> 2) | ((H & 0x03) << 62);
        return r;
    }

    public int128_t divideby3()
    {
        int128_t sum = {0, 0}, num = new int128_t(H, L);
        while (num.H || num.L > 3)
        {
            int128_t n_sar2 = num.rshift2();
            sum = add(n_sar2, sum);
            num = add(n_sar2, new int128_t(0, num.L & 3));
        }

        if (num.H == 0 && num.L == 3)
        {
            // sum = add(sum, 1);
            sum.L++;
            if (sum.L == 0) sum.H++;
        }
        return sum; 
    }
};

int128_t t = new int128_t(0, x);
t = t.add(new int128_t(0, y));
t = t.add(new int128_t(0, z));
t = t.divideby3();
long average = t.L;

In C/C++ on 64-bit platforms it's much easier with __int128

int64_t average = ((__int128)x + y + z)/3;