tachyon,
Nice, but since you decided to cheat, I am going to make you pay for it (compile time). I changed the gen_targets.pl to 10_000 random targets ranging from 1 .. 999_999_999. My solution completed in 25 seconds while yours took a whopping 36 seconds. I realize you only pay the compiling penalty once unless you change the code or run it from a different directory, but hey - I had to level the playing field some how. Incidently, your code ran in 10 seconds the second time around and would still win with the compiling penalty if the number of targets was large enough. Good Job.

Update: If you want to go up to a billion, you are going to need to change the C code. I thought I was doing really well until I realized what was going on.

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