Sunday, October 11. 2009
Euclid Rides Again!
You can use SQL for strictly numerical kinds of tasks. Read on for one such...
The Euclidean Algorithm is a quick way to find the greatest common divisor of two numbers.
Here's how to do it in SQL
Thanks to Dan Colish for helping debug the above code
Here's how to do it in SQL
WITH RECURSIVE t(a, b) AS (
VALUES (11, 7)
UNION ALL
SELECT least(a, b), abs(a-b) FROM t
WHERE abs(a-b) > 0
)
SELECT a AS gcd FROM t
WHERE a=b;
gcd
---
1
(1 row)
Thanks to Dan Colish for helping debug the above code
P.S. remembered the college