Search⌘ K
AI Features

Solution Review: Implement the Sieve of Eratosthenes

Learn how to implement the Sieve of Eratosthenes in Perl by examining a clear solution and explanation. Understand looping through arrays, marking non-prime numbers, and counting primes using conditionals and efficient control flow techniques.

We'll cover the following...

Solution

Let’s look at the solution before jumping into the explanation:

Perl
# Assume that $n is already defined
my @array = 2 .. $n; # Due to 0-based indexing, index of a number $p in this list is $p - 2.
# Implementing Sieve of Eratosthenes. We'll use 1 to cross-off.
foreach my $p (@array) {
next if $p == 1; # Select the first non-1 element of the array
foreach my $j ($p-1 .. $#array) { # Replaces all of its multiples with a 1
$array[$j] = 1 if $array[$j] % $p == 0;
}
}
# Counting the left over elements (non-1's). They must all be the primes.
my $count = 0;
for (@array) {
$count++ unless $_ == 1;
}
print $count;

Explanation

...