How to find the least common multiple of a range of numbers?
LCM function for a range [a, b]
// Euclid algorithm for Greates Common Divisor
function gcd(a, b)
{
return !b ? a : gcd(b, a % b);
}
// Least Common Multiple function
function lcm(a, b)
{
return a * (b / gcd(a,b));
}
// LCM of all numbers in the range of arr=[a, b]
function range_lcm(arr)
{
// Swap [big, small] to [small, big]
if(arr[0] > arr[1]) (arr = [arr[1], arr[0]]);
for(x = result = arr[0]; x <= arr[1]; x++) {
result = lcm(x, result);
}
return result;
}
alert(range_lcm([8, 5])); // Returns 840
function smallestCommons(arr) {
var max = Math.max(...arr);
var min = Math.min(...arr);
var candidate = max;
var smallestCommon = function(low, high) {
// inner function to use 'high' variable
function scm(l, h) {
if (h % l === 0) {
return h;
} else {
return scm(l, h + high);
}
}
return scm(low, high);
};
for (var i = min; i <= max; i += 1) {
candidate = smallestCommon(i, candidate);
}
return candidate;
}
smallestCommons([5, 1]); // should return 60
smallestCommons([1, 13]); // should return 360360
smallestCommons([23, 18]); //should return 6056820
I think this gets the job done.
function leastCommonMultiple(min, max) {
function range(min, max) {
var arr = [];
for (var i = min; i <= max; i++) {
arr.push(i);
}
return arr;
}
function gcd(a, b) {
return !b ? a : gcd(b, a % b);
}
function lcm(a, b) {
return (a * b) / gcd(a, b);
}
var multiple = min;
range(min, max).forEach(function(n) {
multiple = lcm(multiple, n);
});
return multiple;
}
leastCommonMultiple(1, 13); // => 360360
As this question has recently been revived, here's what I think is a simpler take on the question, writing very simple helper functions to calculate the greatest common divisor of two integers (gcd
), to calculate the least common multiple of two integers (lcm
), to calculate the least common multiple of an array of integers (lcmAll
), to generate the range of integers between two given integers (rng
), and finally, in our main function, to calculate the least common multiple of the range of integers between two given integers (lcmRng
):
const gcd = (a, b) => b == 0 ? a : gcd (b, a % b)
const lcm = (a, b) => a / gcd (a, b) * b
const lcmAll = (ns) => ns .reduce (lcm, 1)
const rng = (lo, hi) => [...Array (hi - lo + 1)] .map ((_, i) => lo + i)
const lcmRng = (lo, hi) => lcmAll (rng (lo, hi))
console .log (lcmRng (1, 13))
All of these functions are simple. Although the question was tagged recursion, only gcd
is recursive. If this is an attempt to play with recursion, we could rewrite lcmAll
in a recursive manner with something like this:
const lcmAll = (ns) =>
ns.length == 0
? 1
: lcm(ns[0], lcmAll(ns .slice (1)))
Although I'm a big fan of recursion, I see no other reason to choose the recursive version here over the reduce
one. In this case, reduce
is cleaner.
And finally, if you really want the API originally requested where the range bounds are passed in an array, you could write one more wrapper:
const leastCommonMultiple = ([lo, hi]) => lcmRng (lo, hi)
leastCommonMultiple ([1, 13]) //=> 360360