Re: [PATCH 1/2] factor: add option for printing in x^y format

[Pádraig Brady]

On 27/04/2022 11:07, Rasmus Villemoes wrote:
> When factoring numbers that have a large 2^n factor, it can be hard to
> eyeball just how many 2's there are. Add an option to print each prime
> power factor in the x^y format (omitting the exponent when it is 1).
>
> * src/factor.c: Add --exponents option for printing in x^y format.
>
> Signed-off-by: Rasmus Villemoes <rasmus.villemoes@prevas.dk>

Thanks for the suggestion.
This is one of those borderline cases.

Mainly because it's fairly easy to postprocess the output.
Consider for example:

  $ factor 13 36 | tr ' ' '\n' | uniq -c
        1 13:
        1 13
        1 36:
        2 2
        2 3

Though for interactive use, the new option is a benefit.

Given the interactive benefit and a previous request to add this functionality¹
I'm tentatively leaning towards adding this.

cheers,
Pádraig

¹ https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/coreutils/2017-11/msg00015.html