binary-gap: infinite loop on negative input

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Assessment

Difficulty
1/5
Estimated time
Under an hour
Newbie friendliness
78/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Clearly specified
Activity status
Quiet
Tech stack
python
Domain
backend

Research direction

Start by reading binary-gap/solution.py and exercise binary_gap with a negative input to confirm the non-terminating behavior. Add the requested guard or early return, then verify that negative inputs terminate and the existing positive-input behavior remains unchanged.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

bug

`binary_gap` causes an infinite loop when passed a negative integer. Python's arbitrary-precision right-shift of a negative number never reaches `0`, so the while loop never terminates.

File: `binary-gap/solution.py`

Impact: Latent bug masked by LeetCode's constraint `1 <= n <= 10^9`. Would hang if constraints were relaxed to include negative integers.

Suggested fix: Add an early return or guard for `n <= 0`.

Dominant language
Python
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