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How can I speed up a script that iterates over a large range (600 billion)?

Slaunger slaunger at gmail.com
Thu Jun 23 05:52:38 EDT 2011 
As a general note concerning the use of Python on Project Euler, and
the one minute guideline.

For problems 1-100, each problem is easily solved in less than 1
minute processing time *if* the algorithms and math is done "right"
and with thought.

My project Euler scripts solves the first 100 problems with an average
of 0.91 secs/problem on a 4 y old std business Laptop running 32 bit
Win XP. Of these, one problem takes 18 secs.

For some of the later problems it certainly becomes very difficult to
do all problems within 1 minute if you use Python on an ordinary
processing platform. There you need to resort to a compiled language
like C, C++, or dedicated mathematical software packages, which
implement complex mathematical functions using highly efficient native
libraries.

Kim
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