Another method to multiply two numbers without using the “*” operator [duplicate]

Answer 1

There is a method called Russian Peasant Multiplication. Demonstrate this with the help of a shift operator,

public static int multiply(int n, int m)
{ 
    int ans = 0, count = 0;
    while (m > 0)
    {
        if (m % 2 == 1)             
            ans += n << count;
        count++;
        m /= 2;
    }

    return ans;
}

The idea is to double the first number and halve the second number repeatedly till the second number doesn’t become 1. In the process, whenever the second number become odd, we add the first number to result (result is initialized as 0) One other implementation is,

static int russianPeasant(int n, int m) {
    int ans = 0;

    while (m > 0) {
        if ((m & 1) != 0)
            ans = ans + n;

        n = n << 1;
        m = m >> 1;
    }
    return ans;
}

refer :

• https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/russian-peasant-multiply-two-numbers-using-bitwise-operators/
• https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/multiplication-two-numbers-shift-operator/