From here I am trying to learn segmented sieve. But cannot get these two lines of the code part:
int count_primes(int n) { const int S = 10000;
vector<int> primes;
int nsqrt = sqrt(n);
vector<char> is_prime(nsqrt + 1, true);
for (int i = 2; i <= nsqrt; i++) {
if (is_prime[i]) {
primes.push_back(i);
for (int j = i * i; j <= nsqrt; j += i)
is_prime[j] = false;
}
}
int result = 0;
vector<char> block(S);
for (int k = 0; k * S <= n; k++) {
fill(block.begin(), block.end(), true);
int start = k * S;
for (int p : primes) {
int start_idx = (start + p - 1) / p; //This line
int j = max(start_idx, p) * p - start; //This line
for (; j < S; j += p)
block[j] = false;
}
if (k == 0)
block[0] = block[1] = false;
for (int i = 0; i < S && start + i <= n; i++) {
if (block[i])
result++;
}
}
return result;}
I see it works, but don't get how and why it works. What's the logic or intuition here? Please somebody help me out!








