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Abstract. This article describes the calculation of prime numbers with the sieve of Eratosthenes in Java

1. Prime Factorization

A prime is an integer greater than one whole only positive divisors are one and itself.

The prime counting function for a number N (also known as pie(N)) is the number of primes less or equal to N. The following algorithm determines all prime numbers until a certain value.

2. Implementation in Java

Create a Java project "de.vogella.algorithms.primenumbers".

Create the following program.

package de.vogella.algorithms.primenumbers;

import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;

// Using the sieve of Eratosthenes
public class PrimeNumbers {
    public static List<Integer> calcPrimeNumbers(int n) {
        boolean[] isPrimeNumber = new boolean[n + 1]; // boolean defaults to
        // false
        List<Integer> primes = new ArrayList<Integer>();
        for (int i = 2; i < n; i++) {
            isPrimeNumber[i] = true;
        }
        for (int i = 2; i < n; i++) {
            if (isPrimeNumber[i]) {
                primes.add(i);
                // now mark the multiple of i as non-prime number
                for (int j = i; j * i <= n; j++) {
                    isPrimeNumber[i * j] = false;
                }
            }

        }

        return primes;
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        List<Integer> calcPrimeNumbers = calcPrimeNumbers(21);
        for (Integer integer : calcPrimeNumbers) {
            System.out.println(integer);
        }
        System.out.println("Prime counting function (Pie(N)) : "
                + calcPrimeNumbers.size());
    }
}

3. Links and Literature

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