Prime Numbers

I was watching the video below and I spotted that the Benchmark BM9 is getting Prime Numbers. 

 

This reminded me of a program I wrote in 1986 (20 I'm old years ago) to work out Primes on an Apple ][ in school.

So, I just had to fire up a BASIC interpreter (BASIC-256) to see if I could recreate it again.

Below is the code I did today with loads of REM comments to explain what I did.

REM Printing the Prime numbers up to 10,000 (maxcheck)

REM Winkleink - 2012

REM Just print the 1st 3 Primes

print 1

print 2

print 3

REM x is what we are checking set x to the next biggest odd number

x=5

REM number up to which we will check for primes

maxcheck = 10000

while x < maxcheck

REM Start the checking with 3 as 1 isn't valid and we are only checking odd number

i = 3

REM Set indicator if prime to 1 (means prime)

isprime =1

REM We only have to check odd numbers up to the Square Root of X as any number that will divide into X evenly will be made up of a number below SQR(x) and 1 above SQR(x)

while i <= int(sqr(x))

REM Check not Prime by seeing if there is a remainder if there is no remainder set isprime to 0

if x/i = int(x/i) then isprime=0

REM If not prime then set i to be above the while loop

if isprime = 0 then i= int(sqr(x))

REM Increment i by 2 as only need to divide by odd

i = i +2

endwhile

REM If isprime is still 1 then it is a prime number

if isprime=1 then print x

REM Increment x by 2,again even numbers won't be prime

x = x +2

endwhile

It was great fun to do and really brought back memories of sitting in the computer room in school watching as it slowly printed out the results.  A bit faster today.

And here is a video of it working.

 

As always.  Code is rough and just done for fun.  If you know a better way to calculate primes let me know in the comments.