> This, to defend myself, was not how it was explained in high school.

No worries. I didn't realize this myself until college; most nonspecialist teachers just don't know any better. Nor did, it appears, the original authors of the Haskell Prelude. :)

BTW, this definition of gcd makes it possible to consider gcds in rings that otherwise have no natural order- such as rings of polynomials in several variables, group rings, et cetera.

Nathan Bloomfield

On Sun, May 3, 2009 at 11:16 AM, Achim Schneider <barsoap@web.de> wrote:
Nathan Bloomfield <nbloomf@gmail.com> wrote:

> The "greatest" in gcd is not w.r.t. the canonical ordering on the
> naturals; rather w.r.t. the partial order given by the divides
> relation.
>
This, to defend myself, was not how it was explained in high school.

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