[erlang-questions] If Condition vs. Multiple Function Clauses

[J David Eisenberg]

>
> Message: 8
> Date: Fri, 14 Jun 2013 13:06:33 +0000
> From: Lars Herbach <lars@REDACTED>
> To: "erlang-questions@REDACTED" <erlang-questions@REDACTED>
> Subject: [erlang-questions] If Condition vs. Multiple Function Clauses
> Message-ID: <EF118D9F-6346-4CDB-942F-30A29CBD840C@REDACTED>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> Hi List,
> I'm currently working myself through the "?tudes 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:
>
> gcd(M, N) ->
>     if M == N -> M;
>        M > N -> gcd(M - N, N;
>        true -> gcd(M, N - M)
>     end.
>
> I by myself took another way, working with multiple function clauses (did I name it right?):
>
> gcd(M, N) when M == N ->
>     M;
> gcd(M, N) when M > N ->
>     gcd(M - N, N);
> gcd(M, N) ->
>     gcd(M,  N - M).
>

You're right. Your solution is much more in the spirit of Erlang. I
wrote the étude with "if" because I wanted to have an example of its
use somewhere in the book. I will update the book to put in your
solution as an alternate answer, with some words about using guards in
preference to "if"..

> Now I've got two questions about that:
> 1) Is my solution still recursive, since I practically call different functions?
> 2) Are there any benefits in regards of efficiancy for the first solution?
>
> Thanks,
> Lars.
>
>
> [1]: http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920030034.do