Execution Timed Out (12000 ms) when running a Kata about converting decimals to binary

[luciano2777]

Hello! I'm trying to do a challenge, it says that everything works fine but the problem it's the execution time, I tested it on my machine and it also works fine the problem is the execution time

Is there a way to optimize this code? I used my knowledge of binary for adding numbers.

def replacer(
    s, newstring, index, nofail=False
):  # This will work with "word", index of the character, and the word to replace
    s = list(s)
    s[index] = newstring
    a = "".join(s)
    return a


def UpdateNum(
    num, begin
):  # This code will receive the index of a word and then replace the letter at that index with new content.
    pass
    print(num, begin, " Test", len(num))
    if num[begin] == "0":
        num = replacer(num, "1", begin)
        print("Changing 0:" + num)
    elif num[begin] == "1":
        num = replacer(num, "0", begin)
        num = "0" + num
        num = UpdateNum(num, begin)
        print("Changing 1:" + num)
    return num


def CountChars(string):
    count = 0
    for x in string:
        if x == "1":
            count += 1
    return count


def count_bits(n):
    NumString = "0"

    binary = 0
    if n == 0:
        print("Hello")

    for x in range(n):
        pass
        NumString = UpdateNum(NumString, len(NumString) - 1)
        if NumString[0] == "0":
            NumString = replacer(NumString, "", 0)

    count = NumString.count("1")
    print(count)
    return count


print("Running")
print(count_bits(1234))

[luciano2777]

Forgot to add the link for the kata my bad
https://www.codewars.com/kata/526571aae218b8ee490006f4

(mod edit: removed direct link to trainer)

[Kacarott]

Well your solution goes into a loop which lasts N times, so if N is really big, for example 77231418, then it takes a really really long time. You need to work out a way to do it faster than this.

Maybe look up what built in functions Python has for dealing with binary

[hobovsky]

Please note that Github Discussions are not meant for discussions about specific kata. For help with solving, you can ask a question in the discourse section of the kata, or visit the #help-solve channel of Codewars Discord.

I am closing this discussion as off-topic for Github.