Prime numbers with Erlang

I was helping my son with math homework today.. One of the problems was to find all prime numbers up to a 100.. That was enough for me to start looking for an old Erlang script I have played with few years ago…

-module(eratosthenes).
-export([prime_numbers/1]).

% Sieve of Eratosthenes algorithm for finding all prime numbers up to N.
% http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sieve_of_Eratosthenes

% Generate list of prime numbers up to N.
prime_numbers(N) when is_number(N) ->
  prime_numbers(N, generate(N)).

prime_numbers(Max, [H|T]) when H * H =
  [H | prime_numbers(Max, [R || R  0])];

prime_numbers(_, T) -> T.

% Generate sequence 2..N
generate(N) -> generate(N, 2).

generate(Max, Max) -> [Max];

generate(Max, X) -> [X | generate(Max, X + 1)].

What can I say… Love Erlang

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