Project Euler Problem 5 in F#

Yet another episode in my attempts to solve Project Euler problems.

Enter problem number 5:

2520 is the smallest number that can be divided by each of the numbers from 1 to 10 without any remainder.

What is the smallest positive number that is evenly divisible by all of the numbers from 1 to 20?

I’ll first show you my solution and then explain the bits:

#light

// greatest common divisor (Euclid Algorithm)
let rec gcd (a:int64, b:int64) =
    match b with
       | x when x = 0L -> a
       | _ -> gcd (b, a % b)

// least common divisor
let rec lcm (a:int64, b:int64) =
    (a * b) / gcd (a,b)

// least common divisor for a list of numbers
let rec lcmlist (list: int64 list) =
    match list with
        | [] -> 1L
        | [a] ->  a
        | [a;b] ->  lcm(a,b)
        | h::t  ->  lcm(h, lcmlist t)

// utility to generate a list of all integers
// up to a certain number
let generateListTo top =
    let l = [for i in 1L .. int64 top ->  i]
    l

let resolveProblem5 =
    generateListTo 20 |>  lcmlist

The first thing to realize when reading this problem is that what is really being asked is
the least common multiple (lcm from now on) of a list of numbers (in particular, the numbers from 1 to 20 included).

There’s a straightforward way to compute the lcm, by using the greatest common divisor (gcd), as follows:

As for the gcd itself, it can be easily implemented using the Euclid Algorithm.

The last piece of the puzzle comes when you realize how calculating the lcd of a set of numbers can be reduced to calculating lcds pair-wise in the following fashion:

For example, given the numbers 3, 4, 14, and 18, their lcm would be computed in the following way:

As you can see, the algorithm lends itself beautifully to recursion and such is the solution that I have provided.

See all Project Euler problems solutions.