I know that in Delphi (the best pascal for Windows) that there is a variable that specifies a century "window" around the "current" date so that two digit dates can be interpretted as "current". On the more relevant issue of storing Mersennes is this question and storing numbers from Mathematical series (particularly primes) in general is: Has anyone worked out an efficient way to compress the primes or prime exponents that produce prime Mersennes? Is such a method ever used to reduce the relevant patterns and then backtrack to find new conjectures or avenues for research? I would guess myself that with only 38 numbers there are too many possible compression algorithms, even if you reduced the possible space down by only considering "quick ones". However this might make for an interesting project if one considered primes of the form (2^n)k+/-1. Along similar lines, recently I was reading Hofstadters "Fluid Concepts & Creative Analogies". In the book he shows an interesting project he worked on from an early age of counting triangular numbers between squares which inspired me to come up with the following questions: How many primes of the form (2^k)n +/- 1 with n>1, k>=3 are there between Mersenne primes? Or just: How many primes of the form (2^k)n - 1 with n>1, k>=3 are there between Mersenne primes? Any takers? ---------------------------------------------------------- Daniel W. Grace e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers
