The Greatest Common Divisor (GCD) of two numbers is the largest number that divides both of them.
For example: Let’s say we have following two numbers: 45 and 27
63 = 7 * 3 * 3 42 = 7 * 3 * 2 So, the GCD of 63 and 42 is 21
A program to find the GCD of two numbers using recursion is given as follows.
Example
#include<iostream>
using namespace std;
int gcd(int a, int b) {
if (a == 0 || b == 0)
return 0;
else if (a == b)
return a;
else if (a > b)
return gcd(a-b, b);
else return gcd(a, b-a);
}
int main() {
int a = 63, b = 42;
cout<<"GCD of "<< a <<" and "<< b <<" is "<< gcd(a, b);
return 0;
}Output
GCD of 63 and 42 is 21
In the above program, gcd() is a recursive function. It has two parameters i.e. a and b. If a or b is 0, the function returns 0. If a or b are equal, the function returns a. If a is greater than b, the function recursively calls itself with the values a-b and b. If b is greater than a, the function recursively calls itself with the values a and b-a.
This is demonstrated by the following code snippet.
int gcd(int a, int b) {
if (a == 0 || b == 0)
return 0;
else if (a == b)
return a;
else if (a > b)
return gcd(a-b, b);
else return gcd(a, b-a);
}Another method of finding the GCD of two numbers using recursion is as follows.
Example
#include <iostream>
using namespace std;
int gcd(int a, int b) {
if (b == 0)
return a;
return gcd(b, a % b);
}
int main() {
int a = 63, b = 42;
cout<<"GCD of "<< a <<" and "<< b <<" is "<< gcd(a, b);
return 0;
}Output
GCD of 63 and 42 is 21
In the above program, gcd() is a recursive function. It has two parameters i.e. a and b. If b is greater than 0, then a is returned to the main() function. Otherwise, the gcd() function recursively calls itself with the values b and a%b.
This is demonstrated using the following code snippet.
int gcd(int a, int b) {
if (b == 0)
return a;
return gcd(b, a % b);
}