You are given two 32-bit numbers, N and M, and two bit positions, i and j. Write a method to insert M into N such that M starts at bit j and ends at bit i. You can assume that the bits j through i have enough space to fit all of M. That is, if M = 10011, you can assume that there are at least 5 bits between j and i. You would not, for example, have j = 3 and i = 2, because M could not fully fit between bit 3 and bit 2.
Example1:
Input: N = 10000000000, M = 10011, i = 2, j = 6
Output: N = 10001001100
Example2:
Input: N = 0, M = 11111, i = 0, j = 4
Output: N = 11111
Solutions
Solution 1: Bit Manipulation
First, we clear the bits from the $i$-th to the $j$-th in $N$, then we left shift $M$ by $i$ bits, and finally perform a bitwise OR operation on $M$ and $N$.
The time complexity is $O(\log n)$, where $n$ is the size of $N$. The space complexity is $O(1)$.