Inspectopedia 2025.2 Help

Multiplication or division by power of two

Reports multiplication of an integer value by a constant integer that can be represented as a power of two. Such expressions can be replaced with right or left shift operations for a possible performance improvement.

Note that this inspection is not relevant for modern JVMs (e. g., HotSpot or OpenJ9) because their JIT compilers will perform this optimization. It might only be useful in some embedded systems where no JIT compilation is performed.

Example:

int y = x * 4;

A quick-fix is suggested to replace the multiplication or division operation with the shift operation:

int y = x << 2;

Locating this inspection

By ID

Can be used to locate inspection in e.g. Qodana configuration files, where you can quickly enable or disable it, or adjust its settings.

MultiplyOrDivideByPowerOfTwo
Via Settings dialog

Path to the inspection settings via IntelliJ Platform IDE Settings dialog, when you need to adjust inspection settings directly from your IDE.

Settings or Preferences | Editor | Inspections | Java | Performance | Embedded

Use the option to make the inspection also report division by a power of two. Note that replacing a power of two division with a shift does not work for negative numbers.

Inspection options

Here you can find the description of settings available for the Multiplication or division by power of two inspection, and the reference of their default values.

Check divisions by a power of two also

Default value:

Not selected

Suppressing Inspection

You can suppress this inspection by placing the following comment marker before the code fragment where you no longer want messages from this inspection to appear:

//noinspection MultiplyOrDivideByPowerOfTwo

More detailed instructions as well as other ways and options that you have can be found in the product documentation:

Inspection Details

By default bundled with:

IntelliJ IDEA 2025.2, Qodana for JVM 2025.2,

Last modified: 18 September 2025