NAME

       primes — generate primes

SYNOPSIS

       primes [-d] [start [stop]]

DESCRIPTION

       The  primes  utility  prints  primes  in  ascending  order,  one per line, starting at or above start and
       continuing until, but not including stop.  The start value must be at least 0 and not greater than  stop.
       The  stop  value  must  not  be greater than the maximum possible value of unsigned integer types on your
       system (4294967295 for 32-bit systems and 18446744073709551615 for 64-bit systems).  The default value of
       stop is 4294967295 on 32-bit and 18446744073709551615 on 64-bit.

       When the primes utility is invoked with no arguments, start is read from standard input.  stop  is  taken
       to  be  4294967295  on  32-bit  and 18446744073709551615 on 64-bit.  The start value may be preceded by a
       single ‘+’.  The start value is terminated by a non-digit character (such as a newline).  The input  line
       must not be longer than 255 characters.  When given the -d argument, primes prints the difference between
       the current and the previous prime.

DIAGNOSTICS

       Out of range or invalid input results in an appropriate error message being written to standard error.

BUGS

       primes won't get you a world record.

Debian                                          February 3, 2008                                       PRIMES(6)