Hi, Maybe its just me but I didn't understand what you are trying to do...
> The problem is to compute the number of trailing zero's in > factorials (n! = > 1*2*3*4*.......*n). with n <= 1000000000 > > My solution is as follows (a = times to read a number (b) to > process) : > > --------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > a = input() what does a represent? Its usually worth putting a prompt string into input() - and raw_input() - just as documentation if nothing else! And maybe a descriptive variable name if appropriate. > for i in range(a): > lst = (5, 25, 125, 625, 3125, 15625, 78125, 390625, 1953125, > 9765625, > 48828125, 244140625) None of these have any trailing zeros so far as I can tell? What answer are you expecting from this function? > ans = 0 > b = input() similarly, what is b supposed to be? > for i in lst: And here you are throwing away the i from the outer loop > if i <= b: > ans += b//i And now you divide some arbitrary input value by each factorial in turn and sum the results? > print ans > Please, if you have suggestions to improve the speed of this > algorithm give > an argumentation as to why a certain something is faster. I nbeed to understand what you are tryying to do first, its not making much sense at the moment. (But it is after midnight! :-) > P.s. I know python is probably not the best language for these kinds > of > problems (I can code it in C or C++), it just bugs me that it's > possible > and my solution is failing... ;-) Actually it looks like exactly what I would use Python for rarther than C/C++. The speed issue can be solved in numerous ways but as always lets be sure we get the functionality clear before starting to optimise things. Alan G. _______________________________________________ Tutor maillist - Tutor@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor
