Difference between ```(long) mid * mid ``` and ``` (long) ( mid * mid)``` in Java-CodePudding

I wrote a simple binary search code to find the SQRT(x).


public int mySqrt(int x) {
    if(x <= 1) return x;
    
    int low = 0, high = x >> 1;
    while(low <= high){
        int mid = (low   high) >>> 1;
        long sq = (long) mid * mid;
        if(sq > x) high = mid - 1;
        else if(sq < x) low = mid   1;
        else return mid;
    }
    return high;
}

For this sample input:

Input:
2147395599

Output:
1073697799

Expected:
46339

My code gives wrong output when I write as:

long sq = (long) (mid * mid);

instead of

long sq = (long) mid * mid;

Why does it occur?

CodePudding user response：

For long sq = (long) (mid * mid);, you are first multiplying mid by itself. As mid is an int, this is treated as the multiplication of two ints. As your input can get large enough, this results in integer overflow as it surpasses the maximum value an int can store.

Whereas, for long sq = (long) mid * mid;, you are first converting mid to a long, then multiplying it by mid. This is treated as the multiplication of two longs, which for the values of your input, happen to fit within the maximum value a long can store.

Hence, the second and only the second gives the right output.

CodePudding user response：

Integer overflow. In the first snippet, you compute the product of two ints (which may be bigger than what can fit in an int) and then convert the result to a long.

In the second, you first promote mid to a long and then multiply by an int (which promotes it to a long), with the resulting value being a long.