There’s a fairly well-known trick for determining whether a number is a multiple of 11, by alternately adding and subtracting its decimal digits. If the number you get at the end is a multiple of 11, then the number you started out with is also a multiple of 11:
47278 4 - 7 + 2 - 7 + 8 = 0, multiple of 11 (47278 = 11 * 4298) 52214 5 - 2 + 2 - 1 + 4 = 8, not multiple of 11 (52214 = 11 * 4746 + 8)
We can apply the same trick to binary numbers. A binary number is a multiple of 3 if and only if the alternating sum of its bits is also a multiple of 3:
4 = 100 1 - 0 + 0 = 1, not multiple of 3 6 = 110 1 - 1 + 0 = 0, multiple of 3 78 = 1001110 1 - 0 + 0 - 1 + 1 - 1 + 0 = 0, multiple of 3 109 = 1101101 1 - 1 + 0 - 1 + 1 - 0 + 1 = 1, not multiple of 3
It makes no difference whether you start with the MSB or the LSB, so the following Python function works equally well in both cases. It takes an iterator that returns the bits one at a time. multiplier alternates between 1 and 2 instead of 1 and -1 to avoid taking the modulo of a negative number.
def divisibleBy3(iterator):
multiplier = 1
accumulator = 0
for bit in iterator:
accumulator = (accumulator + bit * multiplier) % 3
multiplier = 3 - multiplier
return accumulator == 0