On Tue, Dec 08, 1998 at 12:07:59AM -0600, Russ Perry Jr wrote:
> But are we taking the wrong tack? This number is the product of two PRIMES,
> correct? Knowing that, might it be easier/faster to find or make a list of
> prime numbers up to the length of the product and multiply all possibilities
> until the product is found? Or is this as time-consuming as trying to factor
> the number?
This may be quite time consuming.
> It strikes me that these primes should be known quantities, as once discovered,
> you wouldn't necessarily want to waste time to find them again, so there MUST
> be a list of all known primes somewhere -- I mean, the Guinness Book of World
> Records has a record for highest known prime number, correct?
It is _way_ easier to write a program to generate prime numbers of
a large nature than it would be to punch in the large primes from an
outside source.
> So, if I'm way off, what am I missing, and if not, who knows where to find
> those primes?
Read Donald Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming. It has some
good prime finding algorithms within.
--
-/
|/| Teknovore <tek@xxxxxxx>
/-
--
Archives (includes files) at http://www.biglist.com/lists/stella/archives/
Unsub & more at http://www.biglist.com/lists/stella/
