in reply to is_a_prime test?

The number that you used is way, way to big. You want to concentrate on the smaller numbers. I used this script with 429496731, and all it does is segfault. Try it with smaller numbers.
#!/usr/bin/perl use strict; use warnings; use Math::Prime::XS qw(is_prime); my $prime = shift @ARGV; if (is_prime($prime)) { print "prime", "\n"; } else { print "not prime", "\n"; }
Update: fixed typo