On Wed, Sep 24, 2014, at 10:26, Ian Kelly wrote:
> This depends entirely on your implementation of the modulo operation,
> which is an issue of computing since the operator is not used in
> mathematics.
Wikipedia suggests that "remainders from Euclidean division" should be
used. In Euclidean division, the remainder is always positive. (whereas
either C or Python allows the modulo to be negative, in different
situations: in python [round quotient down] the modulo has the same sign
as b, whereas in C [round quotient to zero] the modulo has the same sign
as a).
def mod(a, b):
r = a % b
return r + abs(b) if r < 0 else r
def gcd(a, b):
if b == 0: return a
else: return gcd(b, mod(a, b))
This appears to give a negative result when:
a < 0 and b == 0, obviously. A is returned as the gcd.
a == 0 and b < 0. B is returned as the gcd
|a| is exactly divisible by |b| and b < 0. B is returned as the gcd.
However, it still lacks the symmetry of gcd(a, b) == gcd(b, a) in some
cases. For example, gcd(-2, 6) is 2, whereas gcd(6, -2) is -2.
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