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Corning Community College
CSCS1320 C/C++ Programming
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To apply your skills in the implementation of prime number calculating algorithms.
In addition to the new skills required on previous projects, to successfully accomplish/perform this project, the listed resources/experiences need to be consulted/achieved:
In mathematics, a prime number is a value that is only evenly divisible by 1 and itself; it has no other factors. Numbers that have divisibility/factors are known as composite numbers.
The number 6 is a composite value, as in addition to 1 and 6, it also has the factors of 2 and 3.
The number 17 is a prime number, as no numbers other than 1 and 17 can be evenly divided.
As of yet, there is no quick and direct way of determining the primality of a given number. Instead, we must perform a series of tests to determine if it fails primality (typically by proving it is composite).
This process incurs a considerable amount of processing overhead on the task, so much so that increasingly large values take increasing amounts of time. Often, approaches to prime number calculation involve various algorithms, which offer various benefits (less time) and drawback (more complex code).
Your task for this project is to implement 3 prime number programs:
The brute force approach is the simplest to implement (and likely also the worst-performing). We will use it as our baseline (it is nice to have something to compare against).
To perform it, we simply attempt to evenly divide all the values between 1 and the number in question. If any one of them divides evenly, the number is NOT prime, but instead a composite value.
Checking the remainder of a division indicates whether or not a division was clean (having 0 remainder indicates such a state).
For example, the number 11:
11 % 2 = 1 (2 is not a factor of 11) 11 % 3 = 2 (3 is not a factor of 11) 11 % 4 = 3 (4 is not a factor of 11) 11 % 5 = 1 (5 is not a factor of 11) 11 % 6 = 5 (6 is not a factor of 11) 11 % 7 = 4 (7 is not a factor of 11) 11 % 8 = 3 (8 is not a factor of 11) 11 % 9 = 2 (9 is not a factor of 11) 11 % 10 = 1 (10 is not a factor of 11)
Because none of the values 2-10 evenly divided into 11, we can say it passed the test: 11 is a prime number
On the other hand, take 119:
119 % 2 = 1 (2 is not a factor of 119) 119 % 3 = 2 (3 is not a factor of 119) 119 % 4 = 3 (4 is not a factor of 119) 119 % 5 = 4 (5 is not a factor of 119) 119 % 6 = 5 (6 is not a factor of 119) 119 % 7 = 0 (7 is a factor of 119)
Because 7 evenly divided into 119, it failed the test: 119 is not a prime, but instead a composite number.
There is no further need to check the remaining values, as once we have proven the non-primality of a number, the state is set: it is composite. So be sure to use a break statement to terminate the computation loop (will also be a nice boost to runtime).
An optimization to the computation of prime numbers is the square root trick. Basically, if we've processed numbers up to the square root of the number we're testing, and none have proven to be evenly divisible, we can also assume primality and bail out.
The C library has a sqrt() function available through including the math.h header file, and linking against the math library at compile time (add -lm to your gcc line).
To use sqrt(), we pass in the value we wish to obtain the square root of, and assign the result to an int:
int x = 25; int y = 0; y = sqrt(x); // y should be 5 as a result
For instance, the number 37 (using the square root optimization), we find the square root (whole number) of 37 is 6, so we only need to check 2-6:
37 % 2 = 1 (2 is not a factor of 37) 37 % 3 = 1 (3 is not a factor of 37) 37 % 4 = 1 (4 is not a factor of 37) 37 % 5 = 2 (5 is not a factor of 37) 37 % 6 = 1 (6 is not a factor of 37)
Because none of these values evenly divides, we can give 37 a pass: it is a prime
This will dramatically improve the runtime, and offers a nice comparison against our brute force baseline.
There are many other methods, approaches, and tweaks that can be employed to further improve runtime (while maintaining accuracy– all your solutions must match: the same prime numbers should be identified no matter which program is run).
So I'd like you to explore other optimizations that can be made, be it using other prime number algorithms, further refining existing ones, or playing off patterns in numbers.
One assumption I will allow you to make for your optimized solution is that the single-digit primes (2, 3, 5, 7) can be assumed prime, and just printed out if having them be calculated would otherwise break your algorithm (might be helpful to some people; I certainly found it useful in some of my solutions).
It is your task to write the program that will use the above method to compute the requested one-, two-, or three-digit value against a multiplicand of 11 (without using any multiplication to obtain your result).
Your program should:
Several operating behaviors are shown as examples.
A two digit value:
lab46:~/src/cprog/mbe0$ ./multby11 Enter value: 32 32 x 11 = 352 lab46:~/src/cprog/mbe0$
Next, a one digit value:
lab46:~/src/cprog/mbe0$ ./multby11 Enter value: 7 7 x 11 = 77 lab46:~/src/cprog/mbe0$
Finally, three digit value:
lab46:~/src/cprog/mbe0$ ./multby11 Enter value: 567 567 x 11 = 6237 lab46:~/src/cprog/mbe0$
The execution of the programs is short and simple- parse the input, do the processing, produce the output, and then terminate.
There will be an additional bonus point opportunity with this project, based on processing run-time of your optimized solution.
To successfully complete this project, the following criteria must be met:
To submit this program to me using the submit tool, run the following command at your lab46 prompt:
$ submit cprog pnc0 primebrute.c primesqrt.c primeopt.c Submitting cprog project "pnc0": -> primebrute.c(OK) -> primesqrt.c(OK) -> primeopt.c(OK) SUCCESSFULLY SUBMITTED
You should get some sort of confirmation indicating successful submission if all went according to plan. If not, check for typos and or locational mismatches.