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Re: (-1)**1000

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On 10/22/14 5:27 AM, ast wrote:
>
> "Chris Angelico" <rosuav@gmail.com> a écrit dans le message de
> news:mailman.15058.1413968065.18130.python-list@python.org...
>> On Wed, Oct 22, 2014 at 7:27 PM, ast <nomail@invalid.com> wrote:
>>> If i am writing (-1)**1000 on a python program, will the
>>> interpreter do (-1)*(-1)*...*(-1) or something clever ?
>>>
>>> In fact i have (-1)**N with N an integer potentially big.
>>
>> Exponentiation is far more efficient than the naive implementation of
>> iterated multiplication.
>
> In the very particular case of (-1)**N,  I belive that Python check
> the odd or even parity of N and provides the result accordingly.
>
> I tried:
>>>> (-1)**1000000000000000000000000000000000
> 1
>>>> (-1)**1000000000000000000000000000000001
> -1
>
> and it is instantaneous
>
>

Keep in mind that actually calculating the exponentiation wouldn't do 
1000000000000000000000000000000000 multiplications anyway: the clever 
way to do integer powers is by squaring based on the binary 
representation of the exponent.  It's explained here: 
http://stackoverflow.com/a/101613/14343

So even if Python is actually calculating the value, it's only doing 75 
multiplications or so.

-- 
Ned Batchelder, http://nedbatchelder.com

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(-1)**1000 "ast" <nomail@invalid.com> - 2014-10-22 10:27 +0200
  Re: (-1)**1000 Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2014-10-22 19:54 +1100
    Re: (-1)**1000 "ast" <nomail@invalid.com> - 2014-10-22 11:27 +0200
      Re: (-1)**1000 Peter Otten <__peter__@web.de> - 2014-10-22 12:29 +0200
      Re: (-1)**1000 Michiel Overtoom <motoom@xs4all.nl> - 2014-10-22 12:38 +0200
      Re: (-1)**1000 Tim Chase <python.list@tim.thechases.com> - 2014-10-22 05:43 -0500
      Re: (-1)**1000 Peter Otten <__peter__@web.de> - 2014-10-22 13:02 +0200
      Re: (-1)**1000 Ian Kelly <ian.g.kelly@gmail.com> - 2014-10-22 08:23 -0600
      Re: (-1)**1000 Ian Kelly <ian.g.kelly@gmail.com> - 2014-10-22 08:29 -0600
      Re: (-1)**1000 Ned Batchelder <ned@nedbatchelder.com> - 2014-10-22 11:01 -0400
    Re: (-1)**1000 wxjmfauth@gmail.com - 2014-10-22 04:35 -0700
  Re: (-1)**1000 Peter Otten <__peter__@web.de> - 2014-10-22 11:13 +0200
  Re: (-1)**1000 Terry Reedy <tjreedy@udel.edu> - 2014-10-22 13:15 -0400
  Re: (-1)**1000 Dave Angel <davea@davea.name> - 2014-10-24 13:57 -0400
  Re: (-1)**1000 Tony the Tiger <tony@tiger.invalid> - 2014-10-26 20:07 +0000
    Re: (-1)**1000 Ned Batchelder <ned@nedbatchelder.com> - 2014-10-26 16:45 -0400
    Re: (-1)**1000 Stefan Behnel <stefan_ml@behnel.de> - 2014-10-29 20:31 +0100

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