Python recursive program to prime factorize a number

Question

I wrote the following program to prime factorize a number:

import math
def prime_factorize(x,li=[]):
    until = int(math.sqrt(x))+1
    for i in xrange(2,until)         


        

Answer 1

A more functional-style version.

def prime_factorize( number ):
    def recurse( factors, x, n ):
        if x<2: return factors # 0,1 dont have prime factors
        if n > 1+x**0.5: # reached the upper limit
            factors.append( x ) # the only prime left is x itself
            return factors
        if x%n==0: # x is a factor
            factors.append( n )
            return recurse( factors, x/n, n )
        else:
            return recurse( factors, x, n+1 )
    return recurse( [], number, 2)

for num, factors in ((n, prime_factorize( n )) for n in range(1,50000)):
    assert (num==reduce(lambda x,y:x*y, factors, 1)), (num, factors)
    #print num, ":", factors