Find all A^x in a given range
- by Austin Henley
I need to find all monomials in the form AX that when evaluated falls within a range from m to n. It is safe to say that the base A is greater than 1, the power X is greater than 2, and only integers need to be used. For example, in the range 50 to 100, the solutions would be:
2^6
3^4
4^3
My first attempt to solve this was to brute force all combinations of A and X that make "sense." However this becomes too slow when used for very large numbers in a big range since these solutions are used in part of much more intensive processing. Here is the code:
def monoSearch(min, max):
base = 2
power = 3
while 1:
while base**power < max:
if base**power > min:
print "Found " + repr(base) + "^" + repr(power) + " = " + repr(base**power)
power = power + 1
base = base + 1
power = 3
if base**power > max:
break
I could remove one base**power by saving the value in a temporary variable but I don't think that would make a drastic effect. I also wondered if using logarithms would be better or if there was a closed form expression for this. I am open to any optimizations or alternatives to finding the solutions.
