olenihc's blog

Modified Sieve?
By olenihc, history, 10 years ago, In English

Hi!

I've come across this piece of code of a (modified?) sieve and I'm trying to figure out what sieve[i] means and how it works, specially the 2nd for.

Would you help me, please?

Thanks!

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10 years ago, hide # |
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sieve[i] gives you the index of the biggest prime factor. The index is one-based.

sieve[20] == 3, because 20 = 2*2*5 and primes[3] == 5 (5 is the third prime number)

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    10 years ago, hide # ^ |
     
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    Using this method, you generate the prime factorization pretty quick. You can find the biggest prime number using the sieve, divide by this number and repeat with the result.

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    10 years ago, hide # ^ |
     
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    I think you meant prime[5] = 3, right?

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      No, primes is a list of primes. primes = { 0, 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, ... }

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        10 years ago, hide # ^ |
         
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        Ah, sorry I totally misunderstood.

        I thought you meant to give another example, which is sieve[5] = 3, and didn't notice the difference in arrays' names. Sorry about that :D

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