Computing very large exponents

Rails
1

Greetings all.

Does anyone have a clue how to use Ruby to do modular exponentiation
using the binary left-to-right method? I looked through the
documentation and searched the forums and found the String.each_byte
method. However I had no luck finding anything showing how one might
manipulate bits of bytes.

Below is an example of what I am talking about.

The calculation a = b^e mod n (or in Ruby: a = (b ** e).modulo(n) )is
known as modular exponentiation. One efficient method to carry this out
on a computer is the binary left-to-right method. To solve y = x^e mod n
let e be represented in base 2 as

e = e(k-1)e(k-2)…e(1)e(0)

where e(k-1) is the most significant non-zero bit and bit e(0) the
least.
set y = x
for bit j = k - 2 downto 0
begin
y = y * y mod n /* square /
if e(j) == 1 then
y = y * x mod n / multiply */
end
return y

Thanks for looking,

Doug

2

FYI… this is why there’s a Ruby T. mailing list. While this is
interesting, it has nothing to do with Rails, so really shouldn’t be
on this list.

-Brian

3

Brian H. wrote:

FYI… this is why there’s a Ruby T. mailing list. While this is
interesting, it has nothing to do with Rails, so really shouldn’t be
on this list.

-Brian

Thanks Brian,

I realized that shortly after posting and went ahead and reposted on the
other list.

Doug