define gcd 0 0 = 0 (Ticket #3304)

Henning Thielemann lemming at henning-thielemann.de
Wed Jul 8 06:05:21 EDT 2009


On Wed, 8 Jul 2009, Steve wrote:

> On Wed, 2009-07-08 at 10:00 +0200, Henning Thielemann wrote:
>> On Tue, 7 Jul 2009, roconnor at theorem.ca wrote:
>>
>>> As much as I'd love gcd 0 0 to be 0, the major problem is that this change
>>> would contradict the Haskell 98 report.
>>
>> There was a long thread about this issue some years ago that came to the
>> conclusion that the current behaviour of gcd is algebraically most sound.
>
> I don't believe there was any such conclusion. But if you can provide a
> link to the thread it would be interesting to see it.
>
> There was a long thread about the issue in 2001 that came to the
> conclusion that "there is a lot of support for gcd 0 0 = 0" and "The
> strong default for H98 is "no change"".
> http://www.mail-archive.com/haskell@haskell.org/msg09883.html

You are right, I mixed that up.

The mail you mention summarizes the thread with the name "gcd 0 0 = 0"
   http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell/2001-December/008609.html


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