On Tue, January 30, 2007 3:12 pm, Jan Engelhardt wrote:
>
>>> Why the qualifier? Zero *is* not a power of 2, is it?
>
> No, it is not:
>
> In[1]:= Solve[2^n == 0, n]
>
> Out[1]= {}
>
> So says Mathematica5.
As a side note, I would just like to point out that Mathematica does not
deal with modular arithmetic by default (which programmers very much do).
In fact, in modular arithmetic, zero IS a power of two.
2^n = 0 (mod 2^n)
To see if it holds for bytes, substitute n = 8, and you get 2^8 = 0 (mod
256). In other words: Zero is the eighth power of two modulo 256.
Modular arithmetic is, however, very often a source of errors in
programming (unchecked-for overflows and underflows), and it is
questionable whether the programmer would really want 0 reported as a
power of two.
Vegard
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