unique chars with shift and operators : don't understand this code

Question

i don't understand the lines in the loop : we take the character and subtract a, so "10" ? (why?)
then 1 << val : we shift 1 by val ? (why?)
and checker is 0, so how do we reach > 0 in the condition?

    public static boolean isUniqueChars(String str) {
    int checker = 0;
    for (int i = 0; i < str.length(); i++) {
        int val = str.charAt(i) - 'a';
        if ((checker & (1 << val)) > 0) return false;
        checker |= (1 << val);
    }
    return true;
}

Thanks

Answer 1

The code assumes that str is made of lower case letters and returns true if there are no repeating letters. It works like this:

checker is used as a bitmap, that is, each bit in this variable is used to keep track of one letter. Subtracting 'a' from the character gives 0 for 'a', 1 for 'b', 2 for 'c' etc. Shifting 1 left by this number gives 1 for 'a', 2 for 'b', 4 for 'c' etc.

By oring (|) this value with checker the code keeps track of previously encountered characters. So, if we encounter a second 'a' for example, checker has it's first bit set (which is tested by & in the if statement), so we know that str has duplicates.

In short, checker is used as a faster and more compact array of bool. This and similar techniques are called bit manipulation.

Answer 2

str.charAt(i) - 'a' returns, more or less, the "letter in the alphabet": if str.charAt(i) is 'a', this is 0, if it's 'b', val is 1, if it's z, val is 25, and so on.

The rest of this is using a bit-twiddling technique: if the valth bit of checker is 1, then we've seen the valth character already. So checker & (1 << val) is nonzero if and only if the valth bit of checker is set, meaning we've already seen that character. Otherwise, we set the valth bit of checker and continue the loop.

Answer 3

The question is quite old but I think my answer is correct and clearer. We are dealing with lower case letter only in this case. Like Paul asked, (1 << val) means Shift 1 by 'val' not shift 'val' by one. So for example, 'hello' gives:

1st loop: val = 111 in binary, 7 in decimal
          1 << val = 10000000  <-- here one is shifted by 7
          checker = 10000000 
2nd loop: val = 100 in binary, 4 in decimal
          1 << val = 10000
          checker = 10010000
3rd loop: val = 1011 in binary, 11 in decimal
          1 << val = 100000000000
          checker = 100010010000
4th loop: val = 1011 in binary, 11 in decimal
          1 << val = 100000000000
         (checker & (1 << val)) gives 100000000000 which is greater than 0
The loop is over because 'l' is not unique after 'hel' in 'hello'.

I hope this clears things. I have the source code if you'd like to see exactly what's happening.

public class one_one_one {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
    String chars = "hello"; 
    if (isUniqueChars(chars)) {
        System.out.println("Unique");
    } else {
        System.out.println("Not Unique");
    }
    }

    public static boolean isUniqueChars(String str) {
    int checker = 0;
    for (int i = 0; i < str.length(); i++) {
        int val = str.charAt(i) - 'a';
        System.out.println(Integer.toBinaryString(val)); //debug printout
        int temp = 1 << val;
        System.out.println(Integer.toBinaryString(temp)); //debug printout
        System.out.println(checker & (1 << val)); //debug printout
        if ((checker & (1 << val)) > 0) {
        return false;
        }
        checker |= (1 << val);
        System.out.println(Integer.toBinaryString(checker)); //debug printout
        System.out.println(' '); //debug printout
    }
    return true;
    }
}