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Calculating Hamming distance (binary)

by rootcho (Pilgrim)
on Aug 11, 2013 at 01:09 UTC ( [id://1048965]=perlquestion: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??

rootcho has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Any ideas for a better and faster function to calculate Hamming distance. It will be good if I can deduce the bits count.
#Hamming distance sub hd { my ($d1,$d2,$bits) = @_; $bits ||= 8; my $diff = $d1 ^ $d2; my $count = 0; for my $b ( 0 .. $bits-1 ) { my $mask = 1 << $b; ++ $count if $diff & $mask } return $count }
thanks

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Calculating Hamming distance (binary)
by farang (Chaplain) on Aug 11, 2013 at 01:44 UTC
Re: Calculating Hamming distance (binary)
by kcott (Archbishop) on Aug 11, 2013 at 05:02 UTC

    G'day rootcho,

    There may be a better algorithm; however, just rearranging your code, without changing the basic logic, produced significant speed improvements: more than 30% for 8 bits and almost 50% for 64 bits. Here's my version of your subroutine:

    sub hd_Ken { my ($diff, $bits, $count, $mask) = ($_[0] ^ $_[1], $_[2] || 8, 0); $mask = 1 << $_, $diff & $mask && ++$count for 0 .. $bits - 1; $count; }

    As you can see, I've eliminated a number of variables completely ($d1, $d2 and $b) and declared the reminder only once; there's less assignments and the return has been removed. Here's my test and benchmark code:

    #!/usr/bin/env perl use strict; use warnings; use Benchmark qw{cmpthese}; my $x = 1 << 0; my $y = 1 << 1 ^ 1 << 4 ^ 1 << 7 ^ 1 << 15 ^ 1 << 31 ^ 1 << 63; my @test_results = ( hd_OP($x, $y), hd_Ken($x, $y), hd_OP($x, $y, 16), hd_Ken($x, $y, 16), hd_OP($x, $y, 32), hd_Ken($x, $y, 32), hd_OP($x, $y, 64), hd_Ken($x, $y, 64), ); print "Test results: @test_results\n"; cmpthese(-1, { hd_OP_8 => sub { hd_OP($x, $y) }, hd_Ken_8 => sub { hd_Ken($x, $y) }, }); cmpthese(-1, { hd_OP_16 => sub { hd_OP($x, $y, 16) }, hd_Ken_16 => sub { hd_Ken($x, $y, 16) }, }); cmpthese(-1, { hd_OP_32 => sub { hd_OP($x, $y, 32) }, hd_Ken_32 => sub { hd_Ken($x, $y, 32) }, }); cmpthese(-1, { hd_OP_64 => sub { hd_OP($x, $y, 64) }, hd_Ken_64 => sub { hd_Ken($x, $y, 64) }, }); sub hd_Ken { my ($diff, $bits, $count, $mask) = ($_[0] ^ $_[1], $_[2] || 8, 0); $mask = 1 << $_, $diff & $mask && ++$count for 0 .. $bits - 1; $count; } sub hd_OP { my ($d1,$d2,$bits) = @_; $bits ||= 8; my $diff = $d1 ^ $d2; my $count = 0; for my $b ( 0 .. $bits-1 ) { my $mask = 1 << $b; ++ $count if $diff & $mask } return $count }

    Obviously, you'll want to run that on your system. I usually run benchmarks several times to identify outliers; here's a fairly representative result:

    $ pm_hamming.pl Test results: 4 4 5 5 6 6 7 7 Rate hd_OP_8 hd_Ken_8 hd_OP_8 344926/s -- -24% hd_Ken_8 454209/s 32% -- Rate hd_OP_16 hd_Ken_16 hd_OP_16 231849/s -- -26% hd_Ken_16 314139/s 35% -- Rate hd_OP_32 hd_Ken_32 hd_OP_32 139183/s -- -30% hd_Ken_32 198422/s 43% -- Rate hd_OP_64 hd_Ken_64 hd_OP_64 77282/s -- -32% hd_Ken_64 113551/s 47% --

    -- Ken

Re: Calculating Hamming distance (binary)
by jwkrahn (Abbot) on Aug 11, 2013 at 07:01 UTC
    #Hamming distance sub hd { my ($d1,$d2,$bits) = @_; $bits ||= 8; my $diff = $d1 ^ $d2; my $count = 0; for my $b ( 0 .. $bits-1 ) { my $mask = 1 << $b; ++ $count if $diff & $mask } return $count }

    When I run your subroutine I get the warning message:

    Argument "^C" isn't numeric in bitwise and (&) at -e line XX.

    That message means that $diff is a string and $mask is a number.    You can use the bit-wise operators like & on two strings or two numbers but not on a number and a string.

    perl provides a way to count bits in a string using the unpack function.

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