Fast Prime Finder

Prime numbers are numbers that are only divisible by 1 and itself. For example, 2, 3, 5, 7... But what about the number 132598717? It can be difficult to tell whether large numbers like this are prime or not. We may even need to check many big numbers like this (someday, who knows). That's why this program finds all prime numbers in a range given a start and end value VERY QUICKLY.

How Does It Work?

The program makes use of practical ways to check if a number is prime.

For more information see the details.

Requirements

Install on Linux

On Linux it's easy to install compilers and build systems.

debian

sudo apt install build-essential

Install on macOS

It also easy install on macOS with Homebrew.

macOS with Homebrew

brew install gcc make

Install on Windows

Installing Windows is a bit harder. First, install MinGW. For later, research how to install MinGW.

Then install this requirements:

• mingw32-base
• mingw32-gcc-g++
• mingw32-pthreads-w32

I assume you set system variables. You can compile the program manually, but I recommend using a build system. To install make run this command:

mingw-get install mingw32-make

Compile & Run Program

Compile the executable in the 'bin' folder with the 'release' command in the Makefile for Linux or macOS.

make release

To compile for Windows, run this command.

mingw32-make release

To run enter the bin folder and type...

cd bin
./fastprimefinder

Enter the start number and end number on the screen that comes up. All prime numbers in the range you specify will be found and saved to the file. 3

Tests

Found 664,579 primes between 1 and 10,000,000.

Platform	CPU	Time
macOS 13.3.1	Apple M1	~ 0.10 s
Windows 11, version 23H2	Intel Core i5-12450H	~ 0.16 s
Windows 11, version 23H2	Intel Core i7-1255U	~ 0.17 s
Ubuntu 22.10	Intel Core i5-2400	~ 2.50 s

Also

Thanks ChatGPT 🙂