How did Python implement the built-in function pow()?

Question

I have to write a program to calculate a**b % c where b and c are both very large numbers. If I just use a**b % c, it's really slow. Then I found that the built-in function pow() can do this really fast by calling pow(a, b, c).
I'm curious to know how does Python implement this? Or where could I find the source code file that implement this function?

Answer 1

If a, b and c are integers, the implementation can be made more efficient by binary exponentiation and reducing modulo c in each step, including the first one (i.e. reducing a modulo c before you even start). This is what the implementation of long_pow() does indeed. The function has over two hundred lines of code, as it has to deal with reference counting, and it handles negative exponents and a whole bunch of special cases.

At its core, the idea of the algorithm is rather simple, though. Let's say we want to compute a ** b for positive integers a and b, and b has the binary digits b_i. Then we can write b as

b = b_0 + b1 * 2 + b2 * 2**2 + ... + b_k ** 2**k 

ans a ** b as

a ** b = a**b0 * (a**2)**b1 * (a**2**2)**b2 * ... * (a**2**k)**b_k 

Each factor in this product is of the form (a**2**i)**b_i. If b_i is zero, we can simply omit the factor. If b_i is 1, the factor is equal to a**2**i, and these powers can be computed for all i by repeatedly squaring a. Overall, we need to square and multiply k times, where k is the number of binary digits of b.

As mentioned above, for pow(a, b, c) we can reduce modulo c in each step, both after squaring and after multiplying.