| Original author(s) | Robert Morris, Ken Thompson (AT&T Bell Laboratories) |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Variousopen-source andcommercial developers |
| Initial release | 1974; 51 years ago (1974) |
| Operating system | Unix,Unix-like,Plan 9 |
| Platform | Cross-platform |
| Type | Command |
OnUnix,Plan 9, andUnix-like computer systems,factor is a utility forfactoring an integer into itsprime factors.[1]
factor first appeared on5th editionResearch Unix in 1974, as a "user maintained" utility (section 6 of themanual).[2] In the7th edition in 1979, it was moved into the main "commands" section of the manual (section 1). From there, thefactor utility was copied to all other variants ofUnix, including commercial Unixes andBSD. In some variants of Unix, it is classified as a "game" more than a serious utility, and therefore documented in section 6.[3]
Afree software version of thefactor utility was written for theGNU project by Paul Rubin, in 1986. It is now available on allLinux distributions as part of theGNU Core Utilities. In 2008, GNUfactor started to use theGNU MP library forarbitrary-precision arithmetic, allowing it to factor integers of any size, not limited by the machine's native datatypes.
The command is available as a separate package forMicrosoft Windows as part of theUnxUtils collection ofnativeWin32ports of common GNU Unix-like utilities.[4]
factor [number]
The command can be used by supplying an integer value. Various projects, including simple ones such as printing prime numbers, are facilitated by using this command.
factor(1) – Plan 9 Programmer's Manual, Volume 1| File system | |
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| Processes | |
| User environment | |
| Text processing | |
| Shell builtins | |
| Searching | |
| Documentation | |
| Software development | |
| Miscellaneous | |
