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In this paper, we provide two complementary results for cyclic codes of composite length. First, we give a general construction of cyclic codes of length nr from cyclic codes of length n and a lower bound on the minimum distance. Numerical data show that many cyclic codes of composite length with the best parameters can be obtained in this way. Second, in the other direction, we show that for cyclic codes of length n with a primitive n-th root of unity as a non-zero, the minimum distance is roughly bounded by the square-free part of n. This means that we shall not expect good cyclic codes of length n in general if, for example, the length n is divisible by a high power of a prime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]