I am running a python script where I am computing following:
t - 2 ** (j - 1) * l
Where t = 302536, j = 6, l = 0.
This returns me 302536 (t), I am not able to understand how. As per me the result should have been 302535 (t - 1).
2 ** (j - 1) * l results in 0 which according to me should have resulted in 1 as (j - 1) * l results in 0.
How is this being computed?
The only thing that binds tighter than power is parentheses. Python (and every other language that natively supports a power operator that I've seen) follows arithmetic convention on this one, so you don't need to memorize different sets of conflicting rules. You operation can be explicitly rewritten as follows:
t - ((2 ** (j - 1)) * l)
As you pointed out, setting l = 0 discards much of the computation. It's just that it discards everything but t itself.
You could make such things explicit by using the function form of the power operator. Any of the following imports would work for the example below:
from math import pow
from operator import pow
from operator import __pow__ as pow
from numpy import pow
It seems like you wanted/expected
t - pow(2, (j - 1) * l)
But instead got
t - pow(2, j - 1) * l