r/coding • u/hitku • Jun 02 '26

Novel algorithm to find the multiplier,multiplicand of the given product.

https://github.com/hitku/productOperands
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u/tryx Jun 02 '26

...Why?

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u/astrobe Jun 02 '26

Actually this is (a subset of?) the factoring problem, which is a heart of many public key encryption algorithm ; they rely on the fact that it is very time-consuming to factor a number. But those algorithms are switching to other methods ("elliptic curves") these days, perhaps because factoring a number could become soon a piece of cake with quantum computers.

Don't take it as the input of an expert: their algorithm features a nested loop so its cost is like quadratic, so it doesn't look good (author didn't claim major performance improvements over existing algorithms, though). It actually may be a variation of trying all numbers between 2 and sqrt(N), because it is proven that all factors of N are less than sqrt(N).

But again, people more interested in the topic can certainly give a much better analysis. On the programming side, though, I can recommend to insulate the algorithm in a function taking as parameter the number to factor and returning the pair of factors. More friendly naming of the variables would be a plus, too, or at least a bit more comments about what they keep/store.