Program to compute and print 1000th prime number

[Robert P. J. Day]

On Sat, 7 Nov 2009, ssteinerX at gmail.com wrote:

>
> On Nov 7, 2009, at 9:44 AM, Ray Holt wrote:
>
>       I am taking the MIT online course Introduction to Computer Science and
>       Programming. I have a assignment to write a program to compute and print
>       the 1000th. prime number. Can someone give me some leads on the correct
>       code? Thanks, Ray
>
>
> Copying code != doing an assignment.  Try Knuth.

  i was going to say much the same, but it's also worth pointing out
that, using standard techniques, there is no straightforward way to
print the n'th prime number, given some initial value of n.

  the ubiquitous sieve of eratosthenes requires you to pre-specify
your maximum value, after which -- once the sieve completes -- all you
know is that you have all of the prime numbers up to n.  whether
you'll have 1000 of them isn't clear, which means that you might have
to start all over with a larger maximum value.  (being able to
directly determine the n'th prime number would solve a *lot* of prime
number problems. :-)

  and given that one can google and, in seconds, have the solution, i
feel no guilt in referring to
http://code.activestate.com/recipes/366178/.

rday
--

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Robert P. J. Day                               Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA

            Linux Consulting, Training and Kernel Pedantry.

Web page:                                          http://crashcourse.ca
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