Calculate Hamming Distance of two binary strings in C++
In this tutorial, we will learn how to calculate Hamming Distance of two binary strings in C++.
Hamming distance is the number of bits positions in which two numbers differ while comparing two binary strings of equal length.
Example:a=3 ,b=5 output: 2 Explanation: 3 [0 0 1 1] 5 [0 1 0 1] in index 1 and 2,the value of corresponding bits are different.
Find the Hamming Distance of two binary strings in C++
In this approach, we will use XOR. So all the similar bits will become 0 and the bits which are different will remain the same. Hence for number X and Y the problem reduces to finding the number of set bits in (X^Y). We will count the number of bits by right shifting X^Y.
In C++ we have inbuilt bitset which gives set bits and these set bits can be counted by count function.
#include<bits/stdc++.h> using namespace std; int hammingDistance(int X,int Y) { int result=X^Y; //store the XOR output in result variable int count=0; //check each bits stored in result while(result>0) { count+=result & 1; //storing the count of different bit result>>=1; //right shift by 1 } return count; } int main(){ int a,b; cin>>a>>b; cout<<hammingDistance(a,b); return 0; }
input : a=3 b=5 output : 2
Also read: hamming code in C++
Leave a Reply