Check if a number is prime

Ints

For integer types, use ProbablyPrime(0) from package math/big. This primality test is 100% accurate for inputs less than 2⁶⁴.

const n = 1212121
if big.NewInt(n).ProbablyPrime(0) {
	fmt.Println(n, "is prime")
} else {
	fmt.Println(n, "is not prime")
}

1212121 is prime

Larger numbers

For larger numbers, you need to provide the desired number of tests to ProbablyPrime(n). For n tests, the probability of returning true for a randomly chosen non-prime is at most (1/4)ⁿ. A common choice is to use n = 20; this gives a false positive rate 0.000,000,000,001.

z := new(big.Int)
fmt.Sscan("170141183460469231731687303715884105727", z)
if z.ProbablyPrime(20) {
	fmt.Println(z, "is probably prime")
} else {
	fmt.Println(z, "is not prime")
}

170141183460469231731687303715884105727 is probably prime

More code examples

Go blueprints: code for com­mon tasks is a collection of handy code examples.

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