Question

I’m working on Project Euler #14 in C and have figured out the basic algorithm; however, it runs insufferably slow for large numbers, e.g. 2,000,000 as wanted; I presume because it has to generate the sequence over and over again, even though there should be a way to store known sequences (e.g., once we get to a 16, we know from previous experience that the next numbers are 8, 4, 2, then 1).

I’m not exactly sure how to do this with C’s fixed-length array, but there must be a good way (that’s amazingly efficient, I’m sure). Thanks in advance.

Here’s what I currently have, if it helps.

#include <stdio.h>
#define UPTO 2000000

int collatzlen(int n);

int main(){
    int i, l=-1, li=-1, c=0;
    for(i=1; i<=UPTO; i++){
        if( (c=collatzlen(i)) > l) l=c, li=i;
    }
    printf("Greatest length:\t\t%7d\nGreatest starting point:\t%7d\n", l, li);
    return 1;
}

/* n != 0 */
int collatzlen(int n){
    int len = 0;
    while(n>1) n = (n%2==0 ? n/2 : 3*n+1), len+=1;
    return len;
}

Answer 1

Your original program needs 3.5 seconds on my machine. Is it insufferably slow for you?

My dirty and ugly version needs 0.3 seconds. It uses a global array to store the values already calculated. And use them in future calculations.

int collatzlen2(unsigned long n);
static unsigned long array[2000000 + 1];//to store those already calculated

int main()
{
    int i, l=-1, li=-1, c=0;
    int x;
    for(x = 0; x < 2000000 + 1; x++) {
        array[x] = -1;//use -1 to denote not-calculated yet
    }

    for(i=1; i<=UPTO; i++){
        if( (c=collatzlen2(i)) > l) l=c, li=i;
    }
    printf("Greatest length:\t\t%7d\nGreatest starting point:\t%7d\n", l, li);

    return 1;
}

int collatzlen2(unsigned long n){
    unsigned long len = 0;
    unsigned long m = n;
    while(n > 1){
        if(n > 2000000 || array[n] == -1){ // outside range or not-calculated yet
            n = (n%2 == 0 ? n/2 : 3*n+1);
            len+=1;
        }
        else{ // if already calculated, use the value
            len += array[n];
            n = 1; // to get out of the while-loop
        }
    }
    array[m] = len;
    return len;
}