Anonymous Monk,
Ok - this is an adaptation of Challenge: Nearest Palindromic Number. Since the mathematical lesson has already been explained, I decided to spruce up the Perl so that there might be a lesson in it. 
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;

my $nearest_prime = nearest();

for ( map { int( rand 9998 ) + 2 } 1 .. 50 ) {
    print "$_ : ", $nearest_prime->( $_ ), "\n";
}

sub nearest {
    my $prime = is_prime();
    return sub {
        my $n = shift;
        return $n if $prime->( $n );
        my $pos = $n;
        ++$pos while ! $prime->( $pos );
        $pos = $pos - $n;
        my $neg = $n;
        --$neg while ! $prime->( $neg );
        $neg = $n - $neg;
        return $pos > $neg ? $n - $neg : $n + $pos;
    }
}

sub is_prime {
    my %prime = map { $_ => 1 } (2, 3, 5, 7);
    my %not_prime;
    return sub {
        my $n = shift;
        return 1 if $prime{ $n };
        return 0 if $n % 2 == 0 || exists $not_prime{ $n };
        for ( 3 .. sqrt $n ) {
            return $not_prime{ $n } = 0 if $n % $_ == 0;
        }
        return $prime{ $n } = 1;
    };
}

[download]
I will leave converting the code from the nearest prime to the nearest N primes as an exercise for the reader.

Cheers - L~R

In reply to Re: a close prime number by Limbic~Region
in thread a close prime number by Anonymous Monk

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