461. Hamming Distance

1. Description

The Hamming distance between two integers is the number of positions at which the corresponding bits are different.
Given two integers x and y, calculate the Hamming distance.

2. Note

• 0 ≤ x, y < $2^{31}$.

3. Example

Example 1:
Input: x = 1, y = 4
Output: 2
Explanation:
1 (0 0 0 1)
4 (0 1 0 0)
↑ ↑
The above arrows point to positions where the corresponding bits are different.

4. Solutions

My Accepted Solution

Time complexity: O(1)
Space complexity: O(1)

class Solution 
{
public:
    // int hammingDistance(int x, int y)
    int hammingDistance(int x, int y) 
    {
        int difference = x ^ y;
        
        int result = 0;
        while(difference > 0)
        {
            result++;
            difference = difference & (difference - 1);
        }
        
        return result;
    }
};