Finding Primes

Main Documentation Support Server Control Panel

Search…

Finding Primes

Belphegor's prime number is a nifty little palindromic prime.

In this exercise we're going to plan and write a CC that takes one integer N and determine if it is prime. We begin with working at least one instance by hand. We might start with something like is 7 prime and you might just say, yes, I know this, 7 is prime. However, this is not very helpful. Just knowing the answer does not help us develop a step-by-step approach to solving the general problem. Learning to put the obvious aside and think about what is going on is a key programming skill to learn, but takes some time.
So first you have to learn/search for what is a prime number; then test out finding different, larger primes, recognizing the patterns and generalizing it to code. Our example case of 7 would be written down on paper like this:
1
7/2 = 3 remainder 1
2
7/3 = 2 remainder 1
3
7/4 = 1 remainder 3
4
7/5 = 1 remainder 2
5
7/6 = 1 remainder 1
Copied!
Because we've tried all numbers from 2 to 6 and found that 7 is not divisible by any of them, so we can say 7 is a prime (why don't we use 1?). Do the same for 13 or 42. What differs?
Generalized algorithm would go like this:
1
Check if N is less than or equal to 1, if so return "N is not a prime"
2
count from 2 to N (exclusive)
3
    call each number i or use dot
4
        check if N mod i is 0
5
            if so, return "not a prime"
6
if counting ends and "not a prime" is returned, retur "N is a prime"
Copied!
So your task for this exercise is to translate this algorithm to CC-code.
Hint: Remember seq function's max limit.
​Example solution​

Duplicates in a List

Generalizing Repetitions - Stars

Last modified 7mo ago

Export as PDF

Copy link