# Reflection on integer arithmetic package problem

This weekend, I'm working on MAW 3.9. The single problem results in almost 500 lines of code. This is quite unexpected. The problem is stated as the following:

Write an arbitrary-precision integer arithmetic package. You should use a strategy similar to polynomial arithmetic. Compute the distribution of the digits $$0$$ to $$9$$ in $$2^{4000}$$.

## Which way to go?

Since the problem states "arbitrary-precision" and "use a strategy similar to polynomial arithmetic", then I can conclude that linked list is the best data structure for this problem. However, the question is how we can construct the linked list to best implement our integer arithmetic operations (i.e. addition, mulitiplication)?

We essentially have two options:

1. We put the most significant digit as the the very first data node and we put the least significant digit as the last data node. For example, for a number $$123$$, we will implement it like dummy->1->2->3.
2. This is the exactly opposite of the first option. We put the least significant digit as the very first data node and we put the most significant digit as the last data node. Again, for $$123$$, we will implement is like dummy->3->2->1.

Let's evaluate these two options from two perspective:

1. Whether we can easily construct a linked list to represent arbitrary-precision integer?
2. Whether the arithmetic operations are essy to implement?

From the first perspective, for option one, each time we add a new digit to the most significant position, we insert a new node at the very beginning of the list (i.e. right after the header node). On the other hand, for option two, we append a new node at the very end of the list. Since we design our addDigit with an input of a pointer to node (i.e. to specify where to add node), these two options work equally well.

From the second perspective, things are different. Take arithmetic addition as an example. When we try to add two numbers, for option one, we need to walk through the whole list to begin with the very end of the node because we want to start with unit digit. This makes our routine complex because we need to use a while loop to walk through the list first. For second option, situation is easier becauuse the number is implemented in the reverse order in the list. The very first data node is the unit digit and we can directly start with addition while we move towards the end of the list. If we need to add additional node because of carry (i.e. $$999 + 1$$ will be no longer 3-digit but 4-digit number), we can naturally pass the pointer pointing towards the current node to the addDigit function.

So, we choose option two to implement our integer package.

## Memory leak

Memory leak is a very important issue to pay attention to during the testing phase. We use valgrind to help us detect if there is any leak in our code. You can reference their quick start guide and memory check user manual for the commands and error shooting.

Here are the two mistakes I made (You can check out my commit about memory leak debug):

1. Always free the chunk allocated by malloc whenever possible.

Take multiply function as an example:

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51  integerList multiply(integerList A, integerList B) { PtrToNode dummyA = A->NextDigit; PtrToNode dummyB = B->NextDigit; integerList tmpR = makeEmpty(); PtrToNode dummyTmpR = tmpR; integerList R = makeEmpty(); int product, carry = 0; int i, indent = 0; while (dummyA != NULL) { while (dummyB != NULL) { product = dummyA->Digit * dummyB->Digit + carry; carry = product / 10; addDigit(product % 10, dummyTmpR); dummyTmpR = dummyTmpR->NextDigit; dummyB = dummyB->NextDigit; } if (carry > 0) { addDigit(carry, dummyTmpR); dummyTmpR = dummyTmpR->NextDigit; } for(i = 0; i < indent; i++) { addDigit(0,tmpR); } integerList tmp = R; // prevent memory leak R = add(R, tmpR); deleteAll(tmp); indent ++; carry = 0; deleteIntegerList(tmpR); dummyTmpR = tmpR; dummyA = dummyA->NextDigit; dummyB = B->NextDigit; } deleteAll(tmpR); return R; } 

We allocate tmpR through makeEmpty() in Line[7]. If we don't do anything about it inside the function, then the memory will be lost because we have no way to reference this chunk of memory outside the function. Local variable tmpR is the only reference to the memory allocated on the heap. However, once the function is done, the local variable is destroyed from the stack, and thus, we lose our only reference to the memory chunk. So, we need to free it before we exit the function (Line[49]).

1. Be careful with a function call inside a function call.

This type of leak is much more subtle than the first one. Originally instead of

integerList tmp = R;
deleteAll(tmp);


I only have R = add(R, tmpR). This cause the leak because of the following reasoning: Originally, we have R points to a list of nodes. When we do add(R,tmpR), we create a new list of nodes, which hold our addition result. Then we let R points towards this newly-created list. This makes us lose the list of nodes originally pointed by R. That's why we introduce tmp.

## makeEmpty ?

Originally, I don't have this makeEmpty function:

integerList
makeEmpty()
{
integerList R = malloc(sizeof(struct Node));
R->NextDigit = NULL; // super important step
return R;
}


If you take a look at this function, it seems to be a wrapper around malloc operation, which seems redundant (we could directly call malloc directly in the place that makeEmpty appears). However, the key for this routine is R->NextDigit = NULL;. This step can be easily omitted. However, without this step, we don't have fully control on what our newly-allocated empty list (i.e. a list with only header node) will look like. In other words, our header node will point to somewhere (i.e. R->NextDigit) randomly without our key step. This can cause serious trouble for the following routine debug. For example, we could have R->NextDigit holds some address value that happens to have a node structure there with a value in it. For instance, dummy->1. This can usually happen when you OS try to reuse the memory chunk you previously freed. For example, try the following experiment:

1. replace makeEmpty on Line[7] & line[10] in multiply function
2. multiply works fine with test_multiply() solely in the test program.
3. multiply won't work if we do test_intializeInteger() and test_add() before test_multiply() because the integer we construct will no longer be 342 in the test case but something like 3425, where 5 is some value pointed by R->NextDigit.

So, always clear out the pointer by setting it to NULL whenever we do initialization.