I guess you mean that it should be avoided because exponentiation is an expensive operation.

In the code above there would only be at most two iterations through the loop so the effect is small. Nevertheless, it is still easy to avoid it as you have shown.

I wrote that code more than two years ago. If I had to write it again I would probably approach it in the same way. But I would like to have come up with something like sauoq's solution which I think is the nicest solution in this thread (apart form bwana147 golf). ++ in both cases.

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John.