# Sieve Use the Sieve of Eratosthenes to find all the primes from 2 up to a given number. The Sieve of Eratosthenes is a simple, ancient algorithm for finding all prime numbers up to any given limit. It does so by iteratively marking as composite (i.e. not prime) the multiples of each prime, starting with the multiples of 2. Create your range, starting at two and continuing up to and including the given limit. (i.e. [2, limit]) The algorithm consists of repeating the following over and over: - take the next available unmarked number in your list (it is prime) - mark all the multiples of that number (they are not prime) Repeat until you have processed each number in your range. When the algorithm terminates, all the numbers in the list that have not been marked are prime. The wikipedia article has a useful graphic that explains the algorithm: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sieve_of_Eratosthenes Notice that this is a very specific algorithm, and the tests don't check that you've implemented the algorithm, only that you've come up with the correct list of primes. ## Setup Check out [Exercism Help](http://exercism.io/languages/lisp) for instructions to get started writing Common Lisp. That page will explain how to install and setup a Lisp implementation and how to run the tests. ## Formatting While Common Lisp doesn't care about indentation and layout of code, nor whether you use spaces or tabs, this is an important consideration for submissions to exercism.io. Excercism.io's code widget cannot handle mixing of tab and space characters well so using only spaces is recommended to make the code more readable to the human reviewers. Please review your editors settings on how to accomplish this. Below are instructions for popular editors for Common Lisp. ### VIM Use the following commands to ensure VIM uses only spaces for indentation: ```vimscript :set tabstop=2 :set shiftwidth=2 :set expandtab ``` (or as a oneliner `:set tabstop=2 shiftwidth=2 expandtab`). This can be added to your `~/.vimrc` file to use it all the time. ### Emacs Emacs is very well suited for editing Common Lisp and has many powerful add-on packages available. The only thing that one needs to do with a stock emacs to make it work well with exercism.io is to evaluate the following code: `(setq indent-tab-mode nil)` This can be placed in your `~/.emacs` (or `~/.emacs.d/init.el`) in order to have it set whenever Emacs is launched. One suggested add-on for Emacs and Common Lisp is [SLIME](https://github.com/slime/slime) which offers tight integration with the REPL; making iterative coding and testing very easy. ## Source Sieve of Eratosthenes at Wikipedia [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sieve_of_Eratosthenes](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sieve_of_Eratosthenes) ## Submitting Incomplete Solutions It's possible to submit an incomplete solution so you can see how others have completed the exercise.