Problem 29

On this solution I used a 'set' data structure, since more efficient.

Author: Christian Bender

Diff for: Project Euler/Problem 29/solution.py

@@ -0,0 +1,34 @@
+def main():
+    """ 
+    Consider all integer combinations of ab for 2 <= a <= 5 and 2 <= b <= 5:
+
+    22=4, 23=8, 24=16, 25=32
+    32=9, 33=27, 34=81, 35=243
+    42=16, 43=64, 44=256, 45=1024
+    52=25, 53=125, 54=625, 55=3125
+    If they are then placed in numerical order, with any repeats removed, we get the following sequence of 15 distinct terms:
+
+    4, 8, 9, 16, 25, 27, 32, 64, 81, 125, 243, 256, 625, 1024, 3125
+
+    How many distinct terms are in the sequence generated by ab for 2 <= a <= 100 and 2 <= b <= 100?
+    """
+
+    collectPowers = set()
+
+    currentPow = 0
+
+    N = 101     # maximum limit
+
+    for a in range(2,N):
+
+        for b in range (2,N):
+
+            currentPow = a**b   # calculates the current power
+            collectPowers.add(currentPow)   # adds the result to the set
+            
+
+    print "Number of terms ", len(collectPowers)
+
+
+if __name__ == '__main__':
+    main()