I Found It!! The following was a post asking for help finding a bug. I
thought I needed help with my syntax, but just before sending I found
the bug on line 13. Line 13 should read: "base = 2". I would still
appreciate any comments on my program. Maybe there is a better way to do
it that I didn't think about. I know it's not that interesting but it's
my first one.
[post]
I'm almost halfway through an online tutorial I found on the python.org
site and decided to stop and write a program for myself. I got it in my
head to write a program to print all the primes; the idea came from
another tutorial. The program prints some non-prime numbers. In a
comparison to lists of primes the program prints eight non-primes for
numbers less than 150. Those numbers are [27,35,87,95,119,123,143,147].
Here is the program.
base = 2
candidate = 3
while True:
while candidate % base != 0:
base = base + 1
if base > (candidate / 2):
print candidate
candidate = candidate + 1
base = 2
else:
candidate = candidate + 1
The following is a rundown of the program.
candidate: A possible prime number.
base: Start point for divisibility testing.
outer while loop: Causes the program to loop.
inner while loop: Obviously, checks if 'candidate' mod 'base' equals
zero. If not base is incremented by one then 'if loop'.
if loop: After base has been incremented this checks whether all the
possible divisors have been used up. If they have then 'candidate' must
be prime. So, candidate is printed, a new candidate is chosen and the
base is reset.
else loop: If 'candidate' mod 'base' equals zero, then 'candidate' is
not prime and a new candidate is chosen.
I realize yall probably didn't need all that.
At first I tried to use 'return' on the 'else' block to cause the
program to loop, but I don't understand 'return' yet and that didn't
work. So, I put the rest into another while loop and was really happy to
find it worked but the program prints some non-prime numbers.
Thanks, Benjamin Serrato
P.S. What is the chance I'll get spam for using my real email address? I
currently don't get any so...
[/post]
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