in reply to is it prime?
As JavaFan said, the simplest solution is to just start your loop at 2:
sub isPrime($) { $num = shift; my ($i,$c); for ($i = 2; $i < $num / 2; $i++) { if ($num % $i == 0){$c += 1;} } if ($c == 1){return 1;} return 0; }
The above does however produce a false negative for isPrime(2). It produces a negative for isPrime(1) which is probably correct, but could be considered to be a false depending on your stance on the much debated primality of 1.
Better though is:
use 5.010; use strict; sub isPrime (_) { my $num = shift; for my $div (2 .. sqrt $num) # start at 2, end at sqrt($n) { return if $num % $div == 0; # return false if $n evenly divid +es } return 1; # return true if we got through the entire loop } for (1 .. 30) { if (isPrime) { say "$_ is prime"; } else { say; } }
I've folded in JavaFan's other suggestions, plus changed your prototype from ($) to (_). Prototypes are rarely helpful - you're best off leaving them out usually. In this case though, the (_) prototype is quite cool, because what it does is, if isPrime is called with no argument at all, then it checks $_.
Other suggestions: consider what should happen for isPrime(1), isPrime(0), isPrime(-3) and isPrime("chimpanzee"). Add checks for those special cases before the for my $div loop. The above implementation claims all the above are prime, except -3 which dies.
In mathematical circles, 1 is (these days) not usually regarded as prime, and asking the question of non-natural numbers (i.e. non-integers, and integers lower than 1) does not make sense. Bearing that in mind...
use Carp qw/croak/; sub isPrime (_) { my $num = shift; return if $num == 1; # 1 is not prime croak "usage: isPrime(NATURAL NUMBER)" unless $num =~ /^[1-9][0-9]*$/; for my $div (2 .. sqrt $num) { return if $num % $div == 0; } return 1; }
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