zlacker

>>equili+(OP)
Am I the only one who, in response to: "dont use loops" thought of the following:

   int numDigits(int num){
     if (num < 0){
       return numDigits(-1 * num);
     }
     if (num < 10){
       return 1;
     }
     if (num < 100){
       return 2;
     }
     if (num < 1000){
       return 3;
     }
     if (num < 10000){
       return 4;
     }
     if (num < 100000){
       return 5;
     }
     if (num < 1000000){
       return 6;
     }
     if (num < 10000000){
       return 7;
     }
     if (num < 100000000){
       return 8;
     }
     if (num < 1000000000){
       return 9;
     }
     return 10; // cant be more than 10 since sizeof(int) == 4, otherwise extend to 19
   }

>>chacha+9c3
Unfortunately in Python, integers have no fixed maximum size and can grow indefinitely, so your algorithm would need to be long enough to cover all the numbers that can conceivably fit in a computer's memory. I guess there's still a finite size there, but I'm not sure how the memory usage scales with digit length, so I don't know what the largest number would be.