Prime number calculation fun

Question

We\'re having a bit of fun here at work. It all started with one of the guys setting up a Hackintosh and we were wondering whether it was faster than a Windows Box of (nearl

Answer 1

I found this code somewhere on my machine when I started reading this blog entry about prime numbers. The code is in C# and the algorithm I used came from my head although it is probably somewhere on Wikipedia. ;) Anyway, it can fetch the first 150000 prime numbers in about 300ms. I discovered that the sum of the n first odd numbers is equal to n^2. Again, there is probably a proof of this somewhere on wikipedia. So knowing this, I can write an algorithm that wil never have to calculate a square root but I have to calculate incrementally to find the primes. So if you want the Nth prime, this algo will have to find the (N-1) preceding primes before! So there it is. Enjoy!

//
// Finds the n first prime numbers.
//
//count: Number of prime numbers to find.
//listPrimes: A reference to a list that will contain all n first prime if getLast is set to false.
//getLast: If true, the list will only contain the nth prime number.
//
static ulong GetPrimes(ulong count, ref IList listPrimes, bool getLast)
{
    if (count == 0)
        return 0;
    if (count == 1)
    {
        if (listPrimes != null)
        {
            if (!getLast || (count == 1))
                listPrimes.Add(2);
        }

        return count;
    }

    ulong currentSquare = 1;
    ulong nextSquare = 9;
    ulong nextSquareIndex = 3;
    ulong primesCount = 1;

    List dividers = new List();

    //Only check for odd numbers starting with 3.
    for (ulong curNumber = 3; (curNumber  (nextSquareIndex % div) == 0) == false)
                dividers.Add(nextSquareIndex);

            //Move to next square number
            currentSquare = nextSquare;

            //Skip the even dividers so take the next odd square number.
            nextSquare += (4 * (nextSquareIndex + 1));
            nextSquareIndex += 2;

            //We may continue as a square number is never a prime number for obvious reasons :).
            continue;
        }

        //Check if there is at least one divider for the current number.
        //If so, this is not a prime number.
        if (dividers.Exists(div => (curNumber % div) == 0) == false)
        {
            if (listPrimes != null)
            {
                //Unless we requested only the last prime, add it to the list of found prime numbers.
                if (!getLast || (primesCount + 1 == count))
                    listPrimes.Add(curNumber);
            }
            primesCount++;
        }
    }

    return primesCount;
}