Question

I have seen that such a function exists for BigInteger, i.e. BigInteger#gcd. Are there other functions in Java which also work for other types (int, long or Integer)? It seems this would make sense as java.lang.Math.gcd (with all kinds of overloads) but it is not there. Is it somewhere else?

---

(Don’t confuse this question with “how do I implement this myself”, please!)

Answer 1

For int and long, as primitives, not really. For Integer, it is possible someone wrote one.

Given that BigInteger is a (mathematical/functional) superset of int, Integer, long, and Long, if you need to use these types, convert them to a BigInteger, do the GCD, and convert the result back.

private static int gcdThing(int a, int b) {
    BigInteger b1 = BigInteger.valueOf(a);
    BigInteger b2 = BigInteger.valueOf(b);
    BigInteger gcd = b1.gcd(b2);
    return gcd.intValue();
}