Checking if a number is power of 2

If you repeatedly divide the number by 2 (without any remainder), You will finally get a 1 if it is a power of two.

For example if the number is 64

64/2 = 32/2 = 16/2 = 8/2 = 4/2 = 2/2 = 1

If the number is 22

22/2 = 11/2 = 5 (we stop here as there is a non-zero remainder)

public static boolean isPowerOfTwo(int num)
    {
        if( num <= 0 )
            return false;

        while( num > 1)
        {
            if( num %2 != 0)
                return false;
            num = num/2;
        }
        return true;
    }

Method#2: Counting the set bits
If you consider the binary representation of the numbers, The powers of 2 always contain just one set (1) bit.

For example

1 = 0000 0001
2 = 0000 0010
4 = 0000 0100
8 = 0000 1000
16 = 0001 0000
…
So by counting the number of set bits and checking if it is 1, we can conclude that it is a power of 2

Please check my previous post for counting the set bits in a number.

Method#3: Efficient and clever
This method is also based on an observation of binary representation of numbers. 
We all know the Bit-wise and (&) operation . If it is represented by the following table

A   B    A&B
————–
1   1      1
1   0      0
0   1      0
0   0      0

If the number n is a power of 2, then the bit-wise and operation between n and (n-1) is always 0.

For N = 64                 0100 0000 = 64
                           0011 1111 = 63
                          ————- &
                           0000 0000
 

 public static boolean isPowerOfTwo(int num)
    {
        if( num <=<
/span> 0 )
            return false;

        return (num & (num-1)) == 0? true: false;
    }