Cracking the Coding Interview - Fooo

Solutions to Chapter 19 | Moderate
19 4 Write a method which finds the maximum of two numbers You should not use if-else
or any other comparison operator
2 6 9
EXAMPLE
Input: 5, 10
Output: 10
SOLUTION
Cracking the Coding Interview | Additional Review Problems
pg 89
Let’s try to solve this by “re-wording” the problem We will re-word the problem until we get
something that has removed all if statements
Rewording 1: If a > b, return a; else, return b
Rewording 2: If (a - b) is negative, return b; else, return a
Rewording 3: If (a - b) is negative, let k = 1; else, let k = 0 Return a - k * (a - b)
Rewording 4: Let c = a - b Let k = the most significant bit of c Return a - k * c
We have now reworded the problem into something that fits the requirements The code
for this is below
1 int getMax(int a, int b) {
2 int c = a - b;
3 int k = (c >> 31) & 0x1;
4 int max = a - k * c;
5 return max;
6 }