Code of the Day: Javascript, Prime Factors of a Number

Javascript: Prime Factorization

Today’s code is a enhancement of Code Renaissance‘s version of “Finding Prime Numbers in Javascript”.
Main difference are the following.

1. Faster performance by eliminating recursion and caching Math.sqrt.
2. Whole numbers bigger than 1 return an empty array, since they’re not prime numbers.
3. Decimal values are converted to whole numbers.

/**
* @author Larry Battle - http://bateru.com/news/contact-me
* @date May 11, 2012
* @license MIT and GPL v3
* @purpose Return the prime factors of a number.
* @info - http://bateru.com/news/?s=prime+factors
*/
var getPrimeFactors = function(num) {
    num = Math.floor(num);
    var root, factors = [], x, sqrt = Math.sqrt, doLoop = 1 < num;
    while( doLoop ){
        root = sqrt(num);
        x = 2;
        if (num % x) {
            x = 3;
            while ((num % x) && ((x += 2) < root));
        }
        x = (x > root) ? num : x;
        factors.push(x);
        doLoop = ( x != num );
        num /= x;
    }
    return factors;
}

Example:
getPrimeFactors(15120) // returns [2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 7]

Demo: