Project Euler #29: Distinct Powers

Consider all integer combinations of a^b for 2 ≤ a ≤ 5 and 2 ≤ b ≤ 5:

22=4, 23=8, 24=16, 25=32
32=9, 33=27, 34=81, 35=243
42=16, 43=64, 44=256, 45=1024
52=25, 53=125, 54=625, 55=3125

If they are then placed in numerical order, with any repeats removed, we get the following sequence of 15 distinct terms:

4, 8, 9, 16, 25, 27, 32, 64, 81, 125, 243, 256, 625, 1024, 3125

How many distinct terms are in the sequence generated by ab for 2 ≤ a ≤ 100 and 2 ≤ b ≤ 100?

 

Taking advantage of Python’s arbitrary integer length, here is my solution

dup = set()
distinct = set()

for a in range(2, 101):
     for b in range(2, 101):
          foo = pow(a, b)
          if foo not in dup:
               distinct.add(foo)
               dup.add(foo)

print len(distinct)

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