Question

import java.math.BigInteger;
import java.util.ArrayList;

public class Factorial {

    public static int[] bitVector(int n) {
        ArrayList<Integer> bitList = new ArrayList<Integer>();
        BigInteger input = computeFactorial(n);
        System.out.println(input);
        BigInteger[] result = input.divideAndRemainder(new BigInteger(String.valueOf(2)));
        if (result[0].intValue()==0) {return new int[]{result[1].intValue()};}
        else {
            bitList.add(result[1].intValue());
        }
        while(result[0].intValue() != 0) {
            result = result[0].divideAndRemainder(new BigInteger(String.valueOf(2)));
            bitList.add(result[1].intValue());
        }
        int[] array = new int[bitList.size()];
        for (int i=0; i<array.length; i++) {
            array[i]=bitList.get(i).intValue();
        }
        return array;
    }

    public static BigInteger computeFactorial(int n) {
        if (n==0) {
            return new BigInteger(String.valueOf(1));
        } else {
            return new BigInteger(String.valueOf(n)).multiply(computeFactorial(n-1));
        }
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        int[] bitVector = bitVector(35);
        for (int bit: bitVector)
        System.out.print(bit+" ");
        System.out.println();
    }
}

The code above works fine when the input to bitVector is no bigger than 35. However, when I pass 36 as a parameter to bitVector, all but one bit are gone in the output.

I have potentially ruled out the following causes:

1. It may have nothing to do with the BigInteger type since it was designed to never overflow.

2. It may not be related to memory usage of the program, which uses only 380M at runtime.

3. I print out the value of computeFactorial(36), which looks good.

What on earth is going on there?

Answer 1

So what you are trying to do is

public static String factorialAsBinary(int n) {
    BigInteger bi = BigInteger.ONE;
    for (; n > 1; n--)
        bi = bi.multiply(BigInteger.valueOf(n));
    return bi.toString(2);
}

public static void main(String... args) {
    String fact36 = factorialAsBinary(36);
    for (char ch : fact36.toCharArray())
        System.out.print(ch + " ");
    System.out.println();
}

which prints

1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

What on earth is going on there?

Your code is much more complicated than it needs to be which also makes it easier to make mistakes and harder to understand.