Prime numbers program

Question

I'm currently trying out some questions just to practice my programming skills. ( Not taking it in school or anything yet, self taught ) I came across this problem which required me to read in a number from a given txt file. This number would be N. Now I'm suppose to find the Nth prime number for N <= 10 000. After I find it, I'm suppose to print it out to another txt file. Now for most parts of the question I'm able to understand and devise a method to get N. The problem is that I'm using an array to save previously found prime numbers so as to use them to check against future numbers. Even when my array was size 100, as long as the input integer was roughly < 15, the program crashes.

#include <cstdio>
#include <iostream>
#include <cstdlib>
#include <fstream>
using namespace std;

int main() {
    ifstream trial;
    trial.open("C:\\Users\\User\\Documents\\trial.txt");
    int prime;
    trial >> prime;
    ofstream write;
    write.open("C:\\Users\\User\\Documents\\answer.txt");
    int num[100], b, c, e;
    bool check;
    b = 0;
    switch (prime) {
        case 1:
        {
            write << 2 << endl;
            break;
        }
        case 2:
        {
            write << 3 << endl;
            break;
        }
        case 3:
        {
            write << 5 << endl;
            break;
        }
        case 4:
        {
            write << 7 << endl;
            break;
        }
        default:
        {
            for (int a = 10; a <= 1000000; a++) {
                check = false;
                if (((a % 2) != 0) && ((a % 3) != 0) && ((a % 5) != 0) && ((a % 7) != 0)) // first filter
                {
                    for (int d = 0; d <= b; d++) {
                        c = num[d];
                        if ((a % c) == 0) {
                            check = true; // second filter based on previous recorded primes in array
                            break;
                        }

                    }
                    if (!check) {
                        e = a;
                        if (b <= 100) {
                            num[b] = a;
                        }

                        b = b + 1;
                    }
                }
                if ((b) == (prime - 4)) {
                    write << e << endl;
                    break;
                }
            }
        }
    }
    trial.close();
    write.close();
    return 0;
}

I did this entirely base on my dummies guide and myself so do forgive some code inefficiency and general newbie-ness of my algorithm. Also for up to 15 it displays the prime numbers correctly.

Could anyone tell me how I should go about improving this current code? I'm thinking of using a txt file in place of the array. Is that possible? Any help is appreciated.

Answer 1

I haven't looked at your code, but your array must be large enough to contain all the values you will store in it. 100 certainly isn't going to be enough for most input for this problem.

E.g. this code..

int someArray[100];
someArray[150] = 10;

Writes to a location large than the array (150 > 100). This is known as a memory overwrite. Depending on what happened to be at that memory location your program may crash immediately, later, or never at all.

A good practice when using arrays is to assert in someway that the element you are writing to is within the bounds of the array. Or use an array-type class that performs this checking.

For your problem the easiest approach would be to use the STL vector class. While you must add elements (vector::push_back()) you can later access elements using the array operator []. Vector will also give you the best iterative performance.

Here's some sample code of adding the numbers 0-100 to a vector and then printing them. Note in the second loop we use the count of items stored in the vector.

#include <vector> // std::vector

...

const int MAX_ITEMS = 100;

std::vector<int> intVector;

intVector.reserve(MAX_ITEMS); // allocates all memory up-front

// add items
for (int i = 0; i < MAX_ITEMS; i++)
{
  intVector.push_back(i);  // this is how you add a value to a vector;
}

// print them
for (int i = 0; i < intVector.size(); i++)
{
  int elem = intVector[i]; // this access the item at index 'i'
  printf("element %d is %d\n", i, elem);
}

Answer 2

Since your question is about programming rather than math, I will try to keep my answer that way too.

The first glance of your code makes me wonder what on earth you are doing here... If you read the answers, you will realize that some of them didn't bother to understand your code, and some just dump your code to a debugger and see what's going on. Is it that we are that impatient? Or is it simply that your code is too difficult to understand for a relatively easy problem?

To improve your code, try ask yourself some questions:

1. What are a, b, c, etc? Wouldn't it better to give more meaningful names?
2. What exactly is your algorithm? Can you write down a clearly written paragraph in English about what you are doing (in an exact way)? Can you modify the paragraph into a series of steps that you can mentally carry out on any input and can be sure that it is correct?
3. Are all steps necessary? Can we combine or even eliminate some of them?
4. What are the steps that are easy to express in English but require, say, more than 10 lines in C/C++?
5. Does your list of steps have any structures? Loops? Big (probably repeated) chunks that can be put as a single step with sub-steps?

After you have going through the questions, you will probably have a clearly laid out pseudo-code that solves the problem, which is easy to explain and understand. After that you can implement your pseudo-code in C/C++, or, in fact, any general purpose language.

Answer 3

for(int currentInt=2; currentInt<=1000000; currentInt++) 

{check = false;  // Basically the idea for this for loop is to run checks against integers. This is the main for loop in this program. I re initialize check to false ( check is a bool declared above this. )

for( int arrayPrime=0; arrayPrime<currentPrime; arrayPrime++) // This for loop is used for checking the currentInt against previously found primes which are stored in the num array.

{ c=num[arrayPrime];
        if ((currentInt%c)==0) { check = true;// second filter based on previous recorded primes in array
                break;}  // this is the check. I check the number against every stored value in the num array. If it's divisible by any of them, then bool check is set to true.


if ( currentInt == 2)
{ check = false; } // since i preset num[0] = 2 i make an exception for the number 2.

if (!check)
{
e=a;
if(currentPrime <= 100){
num[currentPrime]= currentInt;} // This if uses check to see if the currentInt is a prime. 

currentPrime = currentPrime+1;} // increases the value of currentPrime ( previously b ) by one if !check.

if(currentPrime==prime)
{
write<<e<<endl;
break;}           // if currentPrime == prime then write the currentInt into a txt file and break loop, ending the program.

Thanks for the advice polythinker =)

Answer 4

I'm trying to improve my functional programming at the moment so I just coded up the sieve quickly. I figure I'll post it here. If you're still learning, you might find it interesting, too.

#include <iostream>
#include <list>
#include <math.h>
#include <functional>
#include <algorithm>

using namespace std;

class is_multiple : public binary_function<int, int, bool>
{
    public:
        bool operator()(int value, int test) const
        {
            if(value == test) // do not remove the first value
                return false;
            else
                return (value % test) == 0;
        }
};

int main() 
{
    list<int> numbersToTest;
    int input = 500;

    // add all numbers to list
    for(int x = 1; x < input; x++)
        numbersToTest.push_back(x);

    // starting at 2 go through the list and remove all multiples until you reach the squareroot
    // of the last element in the list
    for(list<int>::iterator itr = ++numbersToTest.begin(); *itr < sqrt((float) input); itr++)
    {
        int tmp = *itr;
        numbersToTest.remove_if(bind2nd(is_multiple(), *itr));  
        itr = find(numbersToTest.begin(), numbersToTest.end(), tmp); //remove_if invalidates iterator 
                                                                 // so find it again. kind of ugly
    }

    // output primes
    for(list<int>::iterator itr = numbersToTest.begin(); itr != --numbersToTest.end(); itr++)
        cout << *itr << "\t";

    system("PAUSE");

    return 0;
}

Any advice on how to improve this would be welcome by the way.

Answer 5

Here is my code. When working on a big number, it's very slow! It can calculate all prime numbers with in the number you input!

#include <iostream>
#include <fstream>
#include <cmath>
using namespace std;

int main()
{
    int m;
    int n=0;
    char ch;
    fstream fp;
    cout<<"What prime numbers do you want get within?  ";
    if((cin>>m)==0)
    {
                 cout<<"Bad input! Please try again!\n";
                 return 1;
    }
    if(m<2)
    {
        cout<<"There are no prime numbers within "<<m<<endl;
        return 0;
    }
    else if(m==2)
    {
        fp.open("prime.txt",ios::in|ios::out|ios::trunc);//create a file can be writen and read. If the file exist, it will be overwriten.
        fp<<"There are only 1 prime number within 2.\n";
        fp<<"2\n";
        fp.close();
        cout<<"Congratulations! It has worked out!\n";
        return 0;
    }
    else
    {
        int j;
        int sq;
        fp.open("prime.txt",ios::in|ios::out|ios::trunc);
        fp<<"2\t\t";
        n++;
        for(int i=3;i<=m;i+=2)
        {
            sq=static_cast<int>(sqrt(i))+1;
            fp.seekg(0,ios::beg);
            fp>>j;
            for(;j<sq;)
            {
                if(i%j==0)
                {
                    break;
                }

                else
                {
                    if((fp>>j)==NULL)
                    {
                        j=3;
                    }
                }
            }
            if(j>=sq)
            {
                fp.seekg(0,ios::end);
                fp<<i<<"\t\t";
                n++;
                if(n%4==0)
                    fp<<'\n';
            }
        }
        fp.seekg(0,ios::end);
        fp<<"\nThere are "<<n<<" prime number within "<<m<<".\n";
        fp.close();
        cout<<"Congratulations! It has worked out!\n";
        return 0;
    }
}

Answer 6

This should also be of interest to you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primality_test