note
moritz
Two simple things you can do (also in Perl 5):
<p>You can get rid of the temporary <c>$t</c> by using list assignment:
<code>
while $b != 0 {
($b, $a) = ($a % $b, $b);
}
</code>
<p>Or you can resort to recursion, ignoring your boundaries to the golf court:
<code>
sub gcd ($a, $b) {
return $a if !$b;
gcd($b, $a % $b);
}
say gcd(24, 42);
</code>
<p>For none of these I can see something where Perl 6 really plays its strengths.
<p>So maybe something completely else? This might work, but since nobody implements <c>infix:<...></c> yet, I couldn't test it:
<code>
sub gcd ($a, $b) {
($a, $b ... { $^x % $^y || () })[*-1]
}
</code>
<p>For example for <c>gcd(42, 24)</c> it would produce the list <c>42, 24, 18, 6</c>. During the next call to the block it the <c>$^x % $^y</c> returns 0, and the block the empty list, ending the creation of the list. The last element is the gcd.
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