Binary Gap
A easy-tier problem at 65% community acceptance, tagged with Bit Manipulation. Reported in interviews at eBay and 1 others.
Binary Gap trips up candidates who overthink bit manipulation. You're given an integer, convert it to binary, find the longest distance between two 1-bits. eBay and X both ask this. It's marked easy with a 65% acceptance rate, but that number lies. Most failures come from edge cases: what if there's only one 1-bit? What if there are no gaps? The problem looks trivial until you're live and realize your first approach misses something. If you blank on the logic during the assessment, StealthCoder surfaces a working solution in seconds, invisible to the proctor.
Companies that ask "Binary Gap"
Binary Gap is the kind of problem that decides whether you pass. StealthCoder reads the problem on screen and surfaces a working solution in under 2 seconds. Invisible to screen share. The proctor sees nothing. Made by an Amazon engineer who watched the leaked-problem repo become an industry secret. He decided you should have it too.
Get StealthCoderThe trick is simpler than candidates expect, which is why they lose points. Convert the integer to its binary string representation, iterate through it, and track the positions of every 1-bit. The gap is the difference between consecutive 1-bit positions. The real catch: you only measure gaps between 1s, so a leading zero doesn't count as a gap start. Many candidates iterate naively and forget to handle numbers with fewer than two 1-bits, or they incorrectly count the leading bits. The pattern is straightforward once you see it, but live assessment time pressure makes people rush. If this specific problem shows up and you blank on the indexing logic, StealthCoder runs silently in the background and hands you the correct approach.
Pattern tags
You know the problem.
Make sure you actually pass it.
Binary Gap recycles across companies for a reason. It's easy-tier, and most candidates blank under the timer. StealthCoder is the hedge: an AI overlay invisible during screen share. It reads the problem and surfaces a working solution in under 2 seconds. Made by an Amazon engineer who watched the leaked-problem repo become an industry secret. He decided you should have it too. Works on HackerRank, CodeSignal, CoderPad, and Karat.
Binary Gap interview FAQ
Is Binary Gap actually as easy as the rating says?+
The acceptance rate is 65%, which sounds high but reflects a lot of submissions from people who've drilled it. The real difficulty is edge case handling: numbers with one 1-bit, numbers with many 1-bits, and correctly measuring only gaps between consecutive 1s. In a live assessment, you see the traps faster if you've practiced the pattern.
What's the trick everyone misses on Binary Gap?+
Forgetting that gaps only count between two 1-bits. If you have a number like 5 (binary 101), the gap is 1. But if you have 1 (binary 1), there are no gaps to measure. Many candidates write code that doesn't account for this and get a wrong answer on hidden test cases.
Do I need advanced bit manipulation knowledge for this?+
No. This is pure Bit Manipulation fundamentals: convert to binary, find positions. No XOR, no bit-shifting tricks, no complex bitwise operations. If you can iterate and track indices, you can solve it. It's a confidence-builder, not a weeder.
Does eBay or X ask this in a specific round?+
The input data confirms eBay and X have asked Binary Gap, but there's no information about which stage of their interview loop it appears in. Assume it can show up anywhere in a technical assessment. It's simple enough to be an early warm-up or a quick confidence check mid-loop.
How do I avoid blanking on this during a live assessment?+
The pattern is mechanical: find all 1-bit positions, compute differences, return the max. Walk through a test case (like 5 or 8) by hand before you code. Mentally rehearse edge cases. If you freeze mid-assessment, StealthCoder solves it silently so you keep momentum and move to harder problems.
Want the actual problem statement? View "Binary Gap" on LeetCode →