leetcode.372. Super Pow

Your task is to calculate ab mod 1337 where a is a positive integer and b is an extremely large positive integer given in the form of an array.

Example1:

a = 2
b = [3]

Result: 8

Example2:

a = 2
b = [1,0]

Result: 1024

One knowledge: ab % k = (a%k)(b%k)%k
Since the power here is an array, we'd better handle it digit by digit.
One observation:
a^1234567 % k = (a^1234560 % k) * (a^7 % k) % k = (((a^123456) % k) ^ 10 ) % k * a^7 % k
Looks complicated? Let me put it other way:
Suppose f(a, b) calculates a^b % k; Then translate above formula to using f :
f(a,1234567) = f(a, 1234560) * f(a, 7) % k = f(f(a, 123456),10) * f(a,7)%k;
Implementation of this idea:

class Solution {
    const int base = 1337;
    int powmod(int a, int k) //a^k mod 1337 where 0 <= k <= 10
    {
        a %= base;
        int result = 1;
        for (int i = 0; i < k; ++i)
            result = (result * a) % base;
        return result;
    }
public:
    int superPow(int a, vector<int>& b) {
        if (b.empty()) return 1;
        int last_digit = b.back();
        b.pop_back();
        return powmod(superPow(a, b), 10) * powmod(a, last_digit) % base;
    }
};