Question

Sought is an efficient algorithm that finds the unique integer in an interval [a, b] which has the maximum number of trailing zeros in its binary representation (a and b are integers > 0):

def bruteForce(a: Int, b: Int): Int =
  (a to b).maxBy(Integer.numberOfTrailingZeros(_))

def binSplit(a: Int, b: Int): Int = {
  require(a > 0 && a <= b)
  val res = ???
  assert(res == bruteForce(a, b))
  res
}

here are some examples

bruteForce(  5,   7) ==   6 // binary 110 (1 trailing zero)
bruteForce(  1, 255) == 128 // binary 10000000
bruteForce(129, 255) == 192 // binary 11000000

etc.

Answer 1

This one finds the number of zeros:

// Requires a>0
def mtz(a: Int, b: Int, mask: Int = 0xFFFFFFFE, n: Int = 0): Int = {
  if (a > (b & mask)) n
  else mtz(a, b, mask<<1, n+1)
}

This one returns the number with those zeros:

// Requires a > 0
def nmtz(a: Int, b: Int, mask: Int = 0xFFFFFFFE): Int = {
  if (a > (b & mask)) b & (mask>>1)
  else nmtz(a, b, mask<<1)
}

I doubt the log(log(n)) solution has a small enough constant term to beat this. (But you could do binary search on the number of zeros to get log(log(n)).)