good question -- branches and loops are ugly!

if we can find a power of 5 that is divisible by 7, then my version could be changed a little to do without the while-loop. the trouble is that there aren't any

i'm glad it works though i have loads of study to do for tomorrow and i couldn't justify taking the time to test it. would you mind explaining how your test works? i don't know anything about python, so that last bit is gibberish to me. is it counting how many of each number is returned?

julz