Edward Elliott wrote: [in reponse to some prime-number code] > 5. you can do better than checking every odd number (next+2) to find the > next prime, but I'm too tired to look into it right now. it may require > more complex machinery.
You only need to check the prime numbers up to sqrt(n). If you're calculating primes in sequential order, this is easy. Otherwise, you can remove a third of the odd divisors by considering only odd numbers of the form 6k±1 (because 6k±3 is divisible by 3). def potential_primes(): yield 2 yield 3 i = 6 while True: yield i - 1 yield i + 1 i += 6 -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list