Largest common divisor

• recursive function calls
• if-then-elif-then-else statement
• alternative formulation using a 'while' loop

(!*******************************************************
  * Mosel Example Problems                              *
  * ======================                              *
  *                                                     *
  * file lcdiv.mos                                      *
  * ``````````````                                      *
  * Example for the use of the Mosel language           *
  * (Largest common divisor of two numbers)             *
  *                                                     *
  * (c) 2008 Fair Isaac Corporation                     *
  *     author: S. Heipcke, 2001                        *
  *******************************************************!)

model Lcdiv

! **** Subroutine calling itself recursively
 function lcdiv(a,b:integer):integer
  if(a=b) then
   returned:=a
  elif(a>b) then
   returned:=lcdiv(b,a-b)
  else
   returned:=lcdiv(a,b-a)
  end-if   
 end-function

(!
 This example shows an implementation that uses recursive function calls.
 With large values for A or B the implementation in function 'lcdiv' can 
 result in quite a large number of levels of recursive calls, which may 
 exceed the system capacity.

 Instead of using such recursive calls without any predetermined limit
 on the recursion depth it is generally preferrable to formulate this 
 programming task as a while loop as shown in function 'lcdiv2':
!)

! **** Alternative implementation without recursive function calls
 function lcdiv2(a,b:integer):integer
  while (a <> b) do
   if (a>b) then 
    a:=a-b 
   else b:=b-a 
   end-if
  end-do
  returned:=a
 end-function

!*******************************************************

 declarations
  A,B: integer                  ! Two integer numbers
 end-declarations

 write("Enter two integer numbers:\n  A: ")
 fflush
 readln(A)
 write("  B: ")
 fflush
 readln(B)

 writeln("Largest common divisor: ", lcdiv(A,B))

! Using the alternative implementation: 
! writeln("Largest common divisor: ", lcdiv2(A,B))

end-model