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Boolean Array Puzzle Solutions

The document describes a Boolean array puzzle and provides 4 methods to solve it. The puzzle involves an array with two elements that are either 0 or 1, with the goal of making both elements 0 using only bitwise complement operations and without using loops or conditional statements. The 4 methods provided use bitwise operations on the array indices and elements to solve the puzzle in a single operation.

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110 views3 pages

Boolean Array Puzzle Solutions

The document describes a Boolean array puzzle and provides 4 methods to solve it. The puzzle involves an array with two elements that are either 0 or 1, with the goal of making both elements 0 using only bitwise complement operations and without using loops or conditional statements. The 4 methods provided use bitwise operations on the array indices and elements to solve the puzzle in a single operation.

Uploaded by

chinni
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

9/2/2016 A Boolean Array Puzzle ­ GeeksforGeeks

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A Boolean Array Puzzle
Input: A array arr[] of two elements having value 0 and 1

Output: Make both elements 0.

Specifications: Following are the specifications to follow.
1) It is guaranteed that one element is 0 but we do not know its position.
2) We can’t say about another element it can be 0 or 1.
3) We can only complement array elements, no other operation like and, or, multi, division, …. etc.
4) We can’t use if, else and loop constructs.
5) Obviously, we can’t directly assign 0 to array elements.

There  are  several  ways  we  can  do  it  as  we  are  sure  that  always  one  Zero  is  there.  Thanks  to  devendraiiit  for
suggesting following 3 methods.

Method 1

void changeToZero(int a[2])
{
   a[ a[1] ] = a[ !a[1] ];
}
 
int main()
{
   int a[] = {1, 0};
   changeToZero(a);
 
   printf(" arr[0] = %d \n", a[0]);
   printf(" arr[1] = %d ", a[1]);
   getchar();
   return 0;
}
Run on IDE

Method 2

void changeToZero(int a[2])
{
    a[ !a[0] ] = a[ !a[1] ]
}
Run on IDE

Method 3
This method doesn’t even need complement.

void changeToZero(int a[2])
{
    a[ a[1] ] = a[ a[0] ]
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9/2/2016 A Boolean Array Puzzle ­ GeeksforGeeks
    a[ a[1] ] = a[ a[0] ]
}
Run on IDE

Method 4
Thanks to purvi for suggesting this method.

void changeToZero(int a[2])
{
  a[0] = a[a[0]];
  a[1] = a[0];
}
Run on IDE

There may be many more methods.

Source: [Link]

Please write comments if you find the above codes incorrect, or find other ways to solve the same problem.

Company Wise Coding Practice    Topic Wise Coding Practice

35 Comments  Category:  Bit Magic

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