gcd method

I believe the errors are coming from the fact that you are using 'Y', 'y', 'N', and 'n' as the cases, when you tell the switch statement (swtich (character)) that it should expect a boolean - either a true or a false.

I would recommend using the .equals() function in the String class. That returns a boolean, so you can resolve it as being either true or false (use the fact that it will return as either true or false).

(And in future posts, please use [code ] and [/code ] around your code - only without the spaces at the end, it really helps with readability. Thanks!)

....I think a switch case is the best method...

I am a beginner programmer in Java. Just started learning the past few weeks.

I'm taking a class and need to create a method that finds the greatest common divisor of two integers. I can assume that both are positive, but I cannot use the Euclidean Algorithm.

I'm sort of lost, but I think I'm on the right track, although this may look confusing:

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1. public static int gcd(int a, int c)
2. {
3. int gcd;
4. int attempt;
5. if (a > c)
6. {
7.  if (a % c == 0)
8. {
9. gcd = c;
10. return gcd;
11. }
12. else
13. {
14. for (attempt = c; attempt = 1; attempt--)
15. do
16. {
17. if (c % attempt == 0 && a % attempt == 0)
18. {
19. gcd = attempt;
20. return attempt;
21. }
22. }
23. while (c % attempt != 0 || a % attempt == 0);
24. }
25. }
26.  

And then I basically copied the code with an else statement if c > a.

I'm sure there are a lot of mistakes. Could someone just point them out and offer a simpler way of doing it (possibly without using the Euclidean Algorithm)?

Thanks.
Michael

I'm afraid you're wrong there and that's where you missed it. Just an if else will do it.

big hint:

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1.  if(str.equalsIgnoreCase("y")) ....

OK. I think this is a lot better. It compiles and makes sense to me at least. However, it doesn't work properly for more difficult integers like 20, 30. Can anyone spot the problem (as I said nothing wrong with compiling, just doesn't work logically). As I said before, I can't use the Euclidean Algorithm, so I basically had to write the simplest program to find gcd.

Oh man, why so complicated? Here's some pseudo code to do it (non-Euclidean-style, why not Euclidean, btw?):