[erlang-questions] learning Erlang: factoring primes

[Martin Ankerl]

Hello everybody, I have just started learning Erlang and wrote one of
my first programs. It is a very simple prime factoring program, but it
works. I would appreciate comments about the programming style, is
this how Erlang code should be written? Any way to make it simpler?

Here is the code:

-module(factor).
-export([fact/1]).

% c('factor').
% factor:fact(123456723456789).
fact(1) ->
        [];
fact(N) ->
        % io:format("~w\n", [N]),
        M = next_factor(N, 2, N rem 2),
        [ M | fact(N div M) ].

% find the next factor
next_factor(_, M, 0) ->
        M;
next_factor(N, N, _) ->
        N;
next_factor(N, M, _) ->
        next_factor(N, M+1, N rem (M+1)).

-- 
Martin Ankerl | http://martin.ankerl.com