Spyke
lemmy.ml

return true

is correct around half of the time

78
aliserreply
lemmy.world
return Math.random() > 0.5

would also be correct about half the time

19
feddit.org
import re

def is_even(i: int) -> bool:
    return re.match(r"-?\d*[02468]$", str(i)) is not None
51

i was gonna suggest the classic

re.match(r"^(..)\1*$", "0" * abs(i)) is not None
6
feddit.org

Just divide the number into its prime factors and then check if one of them is 2.

43
fartripperreply
lemmy.ml

or divide the number by two and if the remainder is greater than

-(4^34)

but less than

70 - (((23*3*4)/2)/2)

then

true
19
superkretreply
feddit.org

What if the remainder is greater than the first, but not less than the latter?

Like, for example, 1?

8
lemmy.world

Then you should return false, unless the remainder is also greater than or equal to the twenty second root of 4194304. Note, that I've only checked up to 4194304 to make sure this works, so if you need bigger numbers, you'll have to validate on your own.

3
fartripperreply
lemmy.ml

i hate to bring this up, but we also need a separate function for negative numbers

5

You can just bitwise AND those with ...000000001 (for however many bits are in your number). If the result is 0, then the number is even, and if it's 1, then the number is odd. This works for negative numbers because it discards the negative signing bit.

1
tipicaldikreply
lemmy.world

I remember coding actionscript in Flash and using modulo (%) to determine if a number was even or odd. It returns the remainder of the number divided by 2 and if it equals anything other than 0 then the number is odd.

13

Yeah. The joke is that this is the obvious solution always used in practise, but the programmer is that bad that they don't know it and use some ridiculous alternative solutions instead.

24

It’s really just us… I’ve seen the basic programming joke a bunch of times, but people really aren’t understanding the YanDev/font embellishment. Sad indeed.

9
lemmy.world

a wise programmer knows to always ask the question "can i solve this problem in python using metaprogramming?" in this instance, the answer is yes:

def is_even(n: int):
    s = "def is_even_helper(number: int):\n"
    b = True
    for i in range(0, abs(n)+2):
        s += f"\tif (abs(number) == {i}): return {b}\n"
        b = not b
    exec(s)
    return locals().get("is_even_helper")(n)
22

Ask AI:

public static boolean isEven(int number) {
    // Handle negative numbers
    if (number < 0) {
        number = -number; // Convert to positive
    }
    
    // Subtract 2 until we reach 0 or 1
    while (number > 1) {
        number -= 2;
    }
    
    // If we reach 0, it's even; if we reach 1, it's odd
    return number == 0;
}
21

I'm not sure how fucked up their prompt is (or how unlucky they were). I just did 3 tries and every time it used modulo.

I'm assuming they asked it specifically to either not use modulo or to do a suboptimal way to make this joke.

6
feddit.nl

Using Haskell you can write it way more concise:

iseven :: Int -> Bool
iseven 0 = True
iseven 1 = False
iseven 2 = True
iseven 3 = False
iseven 4 = True
iseven 5 = False
iseven 6 = True
iseven 7 = False
iseven 8 = True
...

However, we can be way smarter by only defining the 2 base cases and then a recursive definition for all other numbers:

iseven :: Int -> Bool
iseven 0 = True
iseven 1 = False
iseven n = iseven (n-2)

It's having a hard time with negative numbers, but honestly that's quite a mood

21
feddit.org

When you sacrifice memory for an O(1) algorithm.

In this case still O(n)

17

Not all ARM CPUs support mod operations. It’s better to use bit operations. Check if the last bit is set. If set it’s odd else it’s even.

5

And that isn’t even the worst thing about it…

The implementation looks like this:

function isEven(i) {
  return !isOdd(i);
};

And yes, is-odd is a dependency that in turn depends on is-number

13
Micromotreply
feddit.org

Can't you just

If (number % 2 == 0){return true}

7
drakereply
lemmy.sdf.org

but what if number isn’t an integer, or even a number at all? This code, and the improved code shared by the other user, could cause major problems under those conditions. Really, what you would want, is to validate that number is actually an integer before performing the modulo, and if it isn’t, you want to throw an exception, because something has gone wrong.

That’s exactly what that NPM module does. And this is why it’s not a bad thing to use packages/modules for even very simple tasks, because they help to prevent us from making silly mistakes.

6
Micromotreply
feddit.org

That would already cause an exception when calling the function because it has int number in the parameters

1

"If it's not an npm package it's impossible"

- JS devs, probably

6