I mean, an application could exist where this isn’t even wrong. Maybe as a “subroutine” of another algorithm that only needs a truly composite number most of the time to work.
That this reads as a joke says a lot about what application we’re intuitively expecting.
That’s kind of what I meant by putting “subroutine” in quotes. You obviously wouldn’t write it like this, you’d just use a random large number with a bit of explanation.
Oh well, live and learn. I’ll try to be clearer next time.
I mean, an application could exist where this isn’t even wrong. Maybe as a “subroutine” of another algorithm that only needs a truly composite number most of the time to work.
That this reads as a joke says a lot about what application we’re intuitively expecting.
Edit: Not sure why this is being downvoted.
Perhaps because it would do better, being replaced with
noop.A link time optimiser might actually do so.
That’s kind of what I meant by putting “subroutine” in quotes. You obviously wouldn’t write it like this, you’d just use a random large number with a bit of explanation.
Oh well, live and learn. I’ll try to be clearer next time.