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Not getting output for simple java program to find greatest prime factor

class LargestPrimeFactor{
public static void main(String args[]){
long p=0L;
long n=600851475143L;
for(long i=2L;i<(n/2);i++){
if((BigInteger.valueOf(i)).isProbablePrime(1)){
if(n%i==0){
p=i;
}
}
}
System.out.println(p);
}
}
It's problem 3 from Project Euler. I compiled it and no errors showed up. But am not getting any output. Whats the reason?

It is working (just add a print method inside the loop to check i for example).
You are currently using the Brute-Force method:
http://www.mathblog.dk/project-euler-problem-3/
If you visit the link the guy tells you an alternative solution for it.
The problem I see without having much knowledge about this is
that the operations you currently do are way too many.
You got the value "600851475143" stored in a long datatype and you try to
reach the half (300425737571,5) using the int i (counter in your for-loop).
https://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/lang/Integer.html#MAX_VALUE
This tells us: "A constant holding the maximum value an int can have,
2^(31)-1." = 2147483647
This is just 0,00715 (0,7%) of what you actually need.
So this leads us to an "Overflow".
Think of using the alternative method (first link)
and change the counter of your for-loop to type "long".

int maximum value is 2147483647 which is smaller than 600851475143/2
when index i reaches max value it will wrap around and start with negative number (-2147483648)
you should make your index i a long value

You have an infinite loop on the second for iteration you can only see it when you add logging before the end of the loop. It's not because it's not printing the value, when you stare at the console the iterator is still circling through 6857.
Try running the code with extra logging below.
public static void main(String args[]) {
int p = 0;
long n = 600851475143L;
for (int i = 2; i < (n / 2); i++) {
if ((BigInteger.valueOf(i)).isProbablePrime(1)) {
if (BigInteger.valueOf(n % i).compareTo(BigInteger.valueOf(0)) == 0) {
p = i;
System.out.println("Check == true Iteration"+p);
}
System.err.println("Second iterator"+p);
}
}
System.out.println("Final Value of P: "+p);
}

EDITED
The int data type can store values upto 2,147,483,647. To store numbers beyond that, use long.
long n = 600851475143L;
Not 600851475143 L, as that one space before L causes the system to not register it.
Also, int i in the for loop should be long i.

Java - Return random index of specific character in string

So given a string such as: 0100101, I want to return a random single index of one of the positions of a 1 (1, 5, 6).
So far I'm using:
protected int getRandomBirthIndex(String s) {
ArrayList<Integer> birthIndicies = new ArrayList<Integer>();
for (int i = 0; i < s.length(); i++) {
if ((s.charAt(i) == '1')) {
birthIndicies.add(i);
}
}
return birthIndicies.get(Randomizer.nextInt(birthIndicies.size()));
}
However, it's causing a bottle-neck on my code (45% of CPU time is in this method), as the strings are over 4000 characters long. Can anyone think of a more efficient way to do this?

If you're interested in a single index of one of the positions with 1, and assuming there is at least one 1 in your input, you can just do this:
String input = "0100101";
final int n=input.length();
Random generator = new Random();
char c=0;
int i=0;
do{
i = generator.nextInt(n);
c=input.charAt(i);
}while(c!='1');
System.out.println(i);
This solution is fast and does not consume much memory, for example when 1 and 0 are distributed uniformly. As highlighted by #paxdiablo it can perform poorly in some cases, for example when 1 are scarce.

You could use String.indexOf(int) to find each 1 (instead of iterating every character). I would also prefer to program to the List interface and to use the diamond operator <>. Something like,
private static Random rand = new Random();
protected int getRandomBirthIndex(String s) {
List<Integer> birthIndicies = new ArrayList<>();
int index = s.indexOf('1');
while (index > -1) {
birthIndicies.add(index);
index = s.indexOf('1', index + 1);
}
return birthIndicies.get(rand.nextInt(birthIndicies.size()));
}
Finally, if you need to do this many times, save the List as a field and re-use it (instead of calculating the indices every time). For example with memoization,
private static Random rand = new Random();
private static Map<String, List<Integer>> memo = new HashMap<>();
protected int getRandomBirthIndex(String s) {
List<Integer> birthIndicies;
if (!memo.containsKey(s)) {
birthIndicies = new ArrayList<>();
int index = s.indexOf('1');
while (index > -1) {
birthIndicies.add(index);
index = s.indexOf('1', index + 1);
}
memo.put(s, birthIndicies);
} else {
birthIndicies = memo.get(s);
}
return birthIndicies.get(rand.nextInt(birthIndicies.size()));
}

Well, one way would be to remove the creation of the list each time, by caching the list based on the string itself, assuming the strings are used more often than they're changed. If they're not, then caching methods won't help.
The caching method involves, rather than having just a string, have an object consisting of:
current string;
cached string; and
list based on the cached string.
You can provide a function to the clients to create such an object from a given string and it would set the string and the cached string to whatever was passed in, then calculate the list. Another function would be used to change the current string to something else.
The getRandomBirthIndex() function then receives this structure (rather than the string) and follows the rule set:
if the current and cached strings are different, set the cached string to be the same as the current string, then recalculate the list based on that.
in any case, return a random element from the list.
That way, if the list changes rarely, you avoid the expensive recalculation where it's not necessary.
In pseudo-code, something like this should suffice:
# Constructs fastie from string.
# Sets cached string to something other than
# that passed in (lazy list creation).
def fastie.constructor(string s):
me.current = s
me.cached = s + "!"
# Changes current string in fastie. No list update in
# case you change it again before needing an element.
def fastie.changeString(string s):
me.current = s
# Get a random index, will recalculate list first but
# only if necessary. Empty list returns index of -1.
def fastie.getRandomBirthIndex()
me.recalcListFromCached()
if me.list.size() == 0:
return -1
return me.list[random(me.list.size())]
# Recalculates the list from the current string.
# Done on an as-needed basis.
def fastie.recalcListFromCached():
if me.current != me.cached:
me.cached = me.current
me.list = empty
for idx = 0 to me.cached.length() - 1 inclusive:
if me.cached[idx] == '1':
me.list.append(idx)
You also have the option of speeding up the actual searching for the 1 character by, for example, useing indexOf() to locate them using the underlying Java libraries rather than checking each character individually in your own code (again, pseudo-code):
def fastie.recalcListFromCached():
if me.current != me.cached:
me.cached = me.current
me.list = empty
idx = me.cached.indexOf('1')
while idx != -1:
me.list.append(idx)
idx = me.cached.indexOf('1', idx + 1)
This method can be used even if you don't cache the values. It's likely to be faster using Java's probably-optimised string search code than doing it yourself.
However, you should keep in mind that your supposed problem of spending 45% of time in that code may not be an issue at all. It's not so much the proportion of time spent there as it is the absolute amount of time.
By that, I mean it probably makes no difference what percentage of the time being spent in that function if it finishes in 0.001 seconds (and you're not wanting to process thousands of strings per second). You should only really become concerned if the effects become noticeable to the user of your software somehow. Otherwise, optimisation is pretty much wasted effort.

You can even try this with best case complexity O(1) and in worst case it might go to O(n) or purely worst case can be infinity as it purely depends on Randomizer function that you are using.
private static Random rand = new Random();
protected int getRandomBirthIndex(String s) {
List<Integer> birthIndicies = new ArrayList<>();
int index = s.indexOf('1');
while (index > -1) {
birthIndicies.add(index);
index = s.indexOf('1', index + 1);
}
return birthIndicies.get(rand.nextInt(birthIndicies.size()));
}

If your Strings are very long and you're sure it contains a lot of 1s (or the String you're looking for), its probably faster to randomly "poke around" in the String until you find what you are looking for. So you save the time iterating the String:
String s = "0100101";
int index = ThreadLocalRandom.current().nextInt(s.length());
while(s.charAt(index) != '1') {
System.out.println("got not a 1, trying again");
index = ThreadLocalRandom.current().nextInt(s.length());
}
System.out.println("found: " + index + " - " + s.charAt(index));
I'm not sure about the statistics, but it rare cases might happen that this Solution take much longer that the iterating solution. On case is a long String with only a very few occurrences of the search string.
If the Source-String doesn't contain the search String at all, this code will run forever!

One possibility is to use a short-circuited Fisher-Yates style shuffle. Create an array of the indices and start shuffling it. As soon as the next shuffled element points to a one, return that index. If you find you've iterated through indices without finding a one, then this string contains only zeros so return -1.
If the length of the strings is always the same, the array indices can be static as shown below, and doesn't need reinitializing on new invocations. If not, you'll have to move the declaration of indices into the method and initialize it each time with the correct index set. The code below was written for strings of length 7, such as your example of 0100101.
// delete this and uncomment below if string lengths vary
private static int[] indices = { 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 };
protected int getRandomBirthIndex(String s) {
int tmp;
/*
* int[] indices = new int[s.length()];
* for (int i = 0; i < s.length(); ++i) indices[i] = i;
*/
for (int i = 0; i < s.length(); i++) {
int j = randomizer.nextInt(indices.length - i) + i;
if (j != i) { // swap to shuffle
tmp = indices[i];
indices[i] = indices[j];
indices[j] = tmp;
}
if ((s.charAt(indices[i]) == '1')) {
return indices[i];
}
}
return -1;
}
This approach terminates quickly if 1's are dense, guarantees termination after s.length() iterations even if there aren't any 1's, and the locations returned are uniform across the set of 1's.

Coefficient Correlation Over a Large Binary Image Data-Set - Slow Performance

I am trying to build an OCR by calculating the Coefficient Correlation between characters extracted from an image with every character I have pre-stored in a database. My implementation is based on Java and pre-stored characters are loaded into an ArrayList upon the beginning of the application, i.e.
ArrayList<byte []> storedCharacters, extractedCharacters;
storedCharacters = load_all_characters_from_database();
extractedCharacters = extract_characters_from_image();
// Calculate the coefficent between every extracted character
// and every character in database.
double maxCorr = -1;
for(byte [] extractedCharacter : extractedCharacters)
for(byte [] storedCharacter : storedCharactes)
{
corr = findCorrelation(extractedCharacter, storedCharacter)
if (corr > maxCorr)
maxCorr = corr;
}
...
...
public double findCorrelation(byte [] extractedCharacter, byte [] storedCharacter)
{
double mag1, mag2, corr = 0;
for(int i=0; i < extractedCharacter.length; i++)
{
mag1 += extractedCharacter[i] * extractedCharacter[i];
mag2 += storedCharacter[i] * storedCharacter[i];
corr += extractedCharacter[i] * storedCharacter[i];
} // for
corr /= Math.sqrt(mag1*mag2);
return corr;
}
The number of extractedCharacters are around 100-150 per image but the database has 15600 stored binary characters. Checking the coefficient correlation between every extracted character and every stored character has an impact on the performance as it needs around 15-20 seconds to complete for every image, with an Intel i5 CPU.
Is there a way to improve the speed of this program, or suggesting another path of building this bringing similar results. (The results produced by comparing every character with such a large dataset is quite good).
Thank you in advance
UPDATE 1
public static void run() {
ArrayList<byte []> storedCharacters, extractedCharacters;
storedCharacters = load_all_characters_from_database();
extractedCharacters = extract_characters_from_image();
// Calculate the coefficent between every extracted character
// and every character in database.
computeNorms(charComps, extractedCharacters);
double maxCorr = -1;
for(byte [] extractedCharacter : extractedCharacters)
for(byte [] storedCharacter : storedCharactes)
{
corr = findCorrelation(extractedCharacter, storedCharacter)
if (corr > maxCorr)
maxCorr = corr;
}
}
}
private static double[] storedNorms;
private static double[] extractedNorms;
// Correlation between to binary images
public static double findCorrelation(byte[] arr1, byte[] arr2, int strCharIndex, int extCharNo){
final int dotProduct = dotProduct(arr1, arr2);
final double corr = dotProduct * storedNorms[strCharIndex] * extractedNorms[extCharNo];
return corr;
}
public static void computeNorms(ArrayList<byte[]> storedCharacters, ArrayList<byte[]> extractedCharacters) {
storedNorms = computeInvNorms(storedCharacters);
extractedNorms = computeInvNorms(extractedCharacters);
}
private static double[] computeInvNorms(List<byte []> a) {
final double[] result = new double[a.size()];
for (int i=0; i < result.length; ++i)
result[i] = 1 / Math.sqrt(dotProduct(a.get(i), a.get(i)));
return result;
}
private static int dotProduct(byte[] arr1, byte[] arr2) {
int dotProduct = 0;
for(int i = 0; i< arr1.length; i++)
dotProduct += arr1[i] * arr2[i];
return dotProduct;
}

Nowadays, it's hard to find a CPU with a single core (even in mobiles). As the tasks are nicely separated, you can do it with a few lines only. So I'd go for it, though the gain is limited.
In case you really mean cross-correlation, then a transform like DFT or DCT could help. They surely do for big images, but with yours 12x16, I'm not sure.
Maybe you mean just a dot product? And maybe you should tell us?
Note that you actually don't need to compute the correlation, most of the time you only need is find out if it's bigger than a threshold:
corr = findCorrelation(extractedCharacter, storedCharacter)
..... more code to check if this is the best match ......
This may lead to some optimizations or not, depending on how the images look like.
Note also that a simple low level optimization can give you nearly a factor of 4 as in this question of mine. Maybe you really should tell us what you're doing?
UPDATE 1
I guess that due to the computation of three products in the loop, there's enough instruction level parallelism, so a manual loop unrolling like in my above question is not necessary.
However, I see that those three products get computed some 100 * 15600 times, while only one of them depends on both extractedCharacter and storedCharacter. So you can compute
100 + 15600 + 100 * 15600
dot products instead of
3 * 100 * 15600
This way you may get a factor of three pretty easily.
Or not. After this step there's a single sum computed in the relevant step and the problem linked above applies. And so does its solution (unrolling manually).
Factor 5.2
While byte[] is nicely compact, the computation involves extending them to ints, which costs some time as my benchmark shows. Converting the byte[]s to int[]s before all the correlations gets computed saves time. Even better is to make use of the fact that this conversion for storedCharacters can be done beforehand.
Manual loop unrolling twice helps but unrolling more doesn't.

Trying to Make an Average Finder, Not Using ReadLine(), using Only Console

New to Java, basically started yesterday.
Okay, so here's the thing.
I'm trying to make an 'averager', if you wanna call it that, that accepts a random amount of numbers. I shouldn't have to define it in the program, it has to be arbitrary. I have to make it work on Console.
But I can't use Console.ReadLine() or Scanner or any of that. I have to input the data through the Console itself. So, when I call it, I'd type into the Console:
java AveragerConsole 1 4 82.4
which calls the program and gives the three arguments: 1, 4 and 82.4
I think that the problem I'm having is, I can't seem to tell it this:
If the next field in the array is empty, calculate the average (check Line 14 in code)
My code's below:
public class AveragerConsole
{
public static void main(String args[])
{
boolean stop = false;
int n = 0;
double x;
double total = 0;
while (stop == false)
{
if (args[n] == "") //Line 14
{
double average = total / (n-1);
System.out.println("Average is equal to: "+average);
stop = true;
}
else
{
x = Double.parseDouble(args[n]);
total = total + x;
n = n + 1;
}
}
}
}
The following error appears:
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException: 3
at AveragerConsole.main(AveragerConsole.java:14)

for(String number : args) {
// do something with one argument, your else branch mostly
}
Also, you don't need n, you already have the number of arguments, it's the args length.
This is the simplest way to do it.

For String value comparisons, you must use the equals() method.
if ("".equals(args[n]))
And next, the max valid index in an array is always array.length - 1. If you try to access the array.length index, it'll give you ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException.
You've got this probably because your if did not evaluate properly, as you used == for String value comparison.
On a side note, I really doubt if this if condition of yours is ever gonna be evaluated, unless you manually enter a blank string after inputting all the numbers.
Change the condition in your while to this and your program seems to be working all fine for n numbers. (#SilviuBurcea's solution seems to be the best since you don't need to keep track of the n yourself)
while (n < args.length)

You gave 3 inputs and array start couting from 0. The array args as per your input is as follows.
args[0] = 1
args[1] = 4
args[2] = 82.4
and
args[3] = // Index out of bound
Better implementation would be like follows
double sum = 0.0;
// No fault tolerant checking implemented
for(String value: args)
sum += Double.parseDouble(value);
double average = sum/args.length;

Problem with recursive backtracking

Hey guys, recently posted up about a problem with my algorithm.
Finding the numbers from a set which give the minimum amount of waste
Ive amended the code slightly, so it now backtracks to an extent, however the output is still flawed. Ive debugged this considerablychecking all the variable values and cant seem to find out the issue.
Again advice as opposed to an outright solution would be of great help. I think there is only a couple of problems with my code, but i cant work out where.
//from previous post:
Basically a set is passed to this method below, and a length of a bar is also passed in. The solution should output the numbers from the set which give the minimum amount of waste if certain numbers from the set were removed from the bar length. So, bar length 10, set includes 6,1,4, so the solution is 6 and 4, and the wastage is 0. Im having some trouble with the conditions to backtrack though the set. Ive also tried to use a wastage "global" variable to help with the backtracking aspect but to no avail.
SetInt is a manually made set implementation, which can add, remove, check if the set is empty and return the minimum value from the set.
/*
* To change this template, choose Tools | Templates
* and open the template in the editor.
*/
package recursivebacktracking;
/**
*
* #author User
*/
public class RecBack {
int WASTAGE = 10;
int BESTWASTAGE;
int BARLENGTH = 10;
public void work()
{
int[] nums = {6,1,2,5};
//Order Numbers
SetInt ORDERS = new SetInt(nums.length);
SetInt BESTSET = new SetInt(nums.length);
SetInt SOLUTION = new SetInt(nums.length);
//Set Declarration
for (int item : nums)ORDERS.add(item);
//Populate Set
SetInt result = tryCutting(ORDERS, SOLUTION, BARLENGTH, WASTAGE);
result.printNumbers();
}
public SetInt tryCutting(SetInt possibleOrders, SetInt solution, int lengthleft, int waste)
{
for (int i = 0; i < possibleOrders.numberInSet(); i++) // the repeat
{
int a = possibleOrders.min(); //select next candidate
System.out.println(a);
if (a <= lengthleft) //if accecptable
{
solution.add(a); //record candidate
lengthleft -= a;
WASTAGE = lengthleft;
possibleOrders.remove(a); //remove from original set
if (!possibleOrders.isEmpty()) //solution not complete
{
System.out.println("this time");
tryCutting(possibleOrders, solution, lengthleft, waste);//try recursive call
BESTWASTAGE = WASTAGE;
if ( BESTWASTAGE <= WASTAGE )//if not successfull
{
lengthleft += a;
solution.remove(a);
System.out.println("never happens");
}
} //solution not complete
}
} //for loop
return solution;
}
}

Instead of using backtracking, have you considered using a bitmask algorithm instead? I think it would make your algorithm much simpler.
Here's an outline of how you would do this:
Let N be number of elements in your set. So if the set is {6,1,2,5} then N would be 4. Let max_waste be the maximum waste we can eliminate (10 in your example).
int best = 0; // the best result so far
for (int mask = 1; mask <= (1<<N)-1; ++mask) {
// loop over each bit in the mask to see if it's set and add to the sum
int sm = 0;
for (int j = 0; j < N; ++j) {
if ( ((1<<j)&mask) != 0) {
// the bit is set, add this amount to the total
sm += your_set[j];
// possible optimization: if sm is greater than max waste, then break
// out of loop since there's no need to continue
}
}
// if sm <= max_waste, then see if this result produces a better one
// that our current best, and store accordingly
if (sm <= max_waste) {
best = max(max_waste - sm);
}
}
This algorithm is very similar to backtracking and has similar complexity, it just doesn't use recursion.
The bitmask basically is a binary representation where 1 indicates that we use the item in the set, and 0 means we don't. Since we are looping from 1 to (1<<N)-1, we are considering all possible subsets of the given items.
Note that running time of this algorithm increases very quickly as N gets larger, but with N <= around 20 it should be ok. The same limitation applies with backtracking, by the way. If you need faster performance, you'd need to consider another technique like dynamic programming.
For the backtracking, you just need to keep track of which element in the set you are on, and you either try to use the element or not use it. If you use it, you add it to your total, and if not, you proceeed to the next recursive call without increasing your total. Then, you decrement the total (if you incremented it), which is where the backtracking comes in.
It's very similar to the bitmask approach above, and I provided the bitmask solution to help give you a better understanding of how the backtracking algorithm would work.
EDIT
OK, I didn't realize you were required to use recursion.
Hint1
First, I think you can simplify your code considerably by just using a single recursive function and putting the logic in that function. There's no need to build all the sets ahead of time then process them (I'm not totally sure that's what you're doing but it seems that way from your code). You can just build the sets and then keep track of where you are in the set. When you get to the end of the set, see if your result is better.
Hint2
If you still need more hints, try to think of what your backtracking function should be doing. What are the terminating conditions? When we reach the terminating condition, what do we need to record (e.g. did we get a new best result, etc.)?
Hint3
Spoiler Alert
Below is a C++ implementation to give you some ideas, so stop reading here if you want to work on it some more by yourself.
int bestDiff = 999999999;
int N;
vector< int > cur_items;
int cur_tot = 0;
int items[] = {6,1,2,5};
vector< int > best_items;
int max_waste;
void go(int at) {
if (cur_tot > max_waste)
// we've exceeded max_waste, so no need to continue
return;
if (at == N) {
// we're at the end of the input, see if we got a better result and
// if so, record it
if (max_waste - cur_tot < bestDiff) {
bestDiff = max_waste - cur_tot;
best_items = cur_items;
}
return;
}
// use this item
cur_items.push_back(items[at]);
cur_tot += items[at];
go(at+1);
// here's the backtracking part
cur_tot -= items[at];
cur_items.pop_back();
// don't use this item
go(at+1);
}
int main() {
// 4 items in the set, so N is 4
N=4;
// maximum waste we can eliminiate is 10
max_waste = 10;
// call the backtracking algo
go(0);
// output the results
cout<<"bestDiff = "<<bestDiff<<endl;
cout<<"The items are:"<<endl;
for (int i = 0; i < best_items.size(); ++i) {
cout<<best_items[i]<<" ";
}
return 0;
}