<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=iso-8859-1"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div>Yep, that would be a better, more consistent way to go...</div><div><br></div><div>if M == N -> a();</div><div> M > N -> b();</div><div> _ -> c()</div><div>end.</div><div><br></div><div>:-) ty Erik</div><div><br></div><div>/s</div><div><br><div><div>On Jun 15, 2013, at 2:42 AM, Erik Søe Sørensen <<a href="mailto:eriksoe@gmail.com">eriksoe@gmail.com</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><p dir="ltr">Me too. One might even consider using "_" for such a catch-all.<br>
(A reason in favour of that, apart from the syntactic similarity with "case"-catch-alls: 'else' is a valid expression like 'true', '_' isn't and therefore doesn't confuse by the apparent overlap.)</p>
<div class="gmail_quote">Den 15/06/2013 02.40 skrev "Steve Davis" <<a href="mailto:steven.charles.davis@gmail.com">steven.charles.davis@gmail.com</a>>:<br type="attribution"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
I strongly (personally) dislike use of "if" syntax, but only because of the counterintuitive "true" evaluation.<div><br></div><div>What if the language were to return the atom "else" instead of "true"?</div>
<div><br></div><div>I doubt that would be considered "better" but it would sure make things more readable...</div><div><br></div><div>/s<br><br>On Friday, June 14, 2013 8:06:33 AM UTC-5, Lars Herbach wrote:<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0;margin-left:0.8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div style="word-wrap:break-word">
Hi List,
<div>I'm currently working myself through the "Études for Erlang" book [1] and in exercise it wks's to write a recursive function, calculating the greatest common divisor for two numbers N and M. The suggested solution is a single gcd/2 function with an If
condition and recursion:</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><font face="Courier New">gcd(M, N) -> </font></div>
<div><font face="Courier New"> if M == N -> M;</font></div>
<div><font face="Courier New"> M > N -> gcd(M - N, N;</font></div>
<div><font face="Courier New"> true -> gcd(M, N - M)</font></div>
<div><font face="Courier New"> end.</font></div>
<div><font face="Courier"><br>
</font></div>
<div>I by myself took another way, working with multiple function clauses (did I name it right?):</div>
<div>
<div><font face="Courier New"><br>
</font></div>
<div><font face="Courier New">gcd(M, N) when M == N -></font></div>
<div><font face="Courier New"> M;</font></div>
<div><font face="Courier New">gcd(M, N) when M > N -></font></div>
<div><font face="Courier New"> gcd(M - N, N);</font></div>
<div><font face="Courier New">gcd(M, N) -></font></div>
<div><font face="Courier New"> gcd(M, N - M).</font></div>
</div>
<div><font face="Courier New"><br>
</font></div>
<div>Now I've got two questions about that: </div>
<div>1) Is my solution still recursive, since I practically call different functions?</div>
<div>2) Are there any benefits in regards of efficiancy for the first solution?</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Thanks,</div>
<div>Lars.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>[1]: <a href="http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920030034.do" target="_blank">http://shop.oreilly.com/<u></u>product/0636920030034.do</a></div>
</div>
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<br></blockquote></div>
</blockquote></div><br></div></body></html>