Finding the LCM of a range of numbers

Question

I read an interesting DailyWTF post today, \"Out of All The Possible Answers...\" and it interested me enough to dig up the original forum post where it was submitted. This

Answer 1

An algorithm in Haskell. This is the language I think in nowadays for algorithmic thinking. This might seem strange, complicated, and uninviting -- welcome to Haskell!

primes :: (Integral a) => [a]
--implementation of primes is to be left for another day.

primeFactors :: (Integral a) => a -> [a]
primeFactors n = go n primes where
    go n ps@(p : pt) =
        if q < 1 then [] else
        if r == 0 then p : go q ps else
        go n pt
        where (q, r) = quotRem n p

multiFactors :: (Integral a) => a -> [(a, Int)]
multiFactors n = [ (head xs, length xs) | xs <- group $ primeFactors $ n ]

multiProduct :: (Integral a) => [(a, Int)] -> a
multiProduct xs = product $ map (uncurry (^)) $ xs

mergeFactorsPairwise [] bs = bs
mergeFactorsPairwise as [] = as
mergeFactorsPairwise a@((an, am) : _) b@((bn, bm) : _) =
    case compare an bn of
        LT -> (head a) : mergeFactorsPairwise (tail a) b
        GT -> (head b) : mergeFactorsPairwise a (tail b)
        EQ -> (an, max am bm) : mergeFactorsPairwise (tail a) (tail b)

wideLCM :: (Integral a) => [a] -> a
wideLCM nums = multiProduct $ foldl mergeFactorsPairwise [] $ map multiFactors $ nums