regex to match irreducible fractions

Question

How can I match irreducible fractions with regex?

For example, 23/25, 3/4, 5/2, 100/101, etc.

First of all, I have no idea about the gcd-algorithm realization in

Answer 1

UPDATE

Since the poster requested a single regex that matches against strings like "36/270", but says it doesn’t matter how legible it is, that regex is:

my $reducible_rx = qr{^(\d+)/(\d+)$(?(?{(1x$1."/".1x$2)=~m{^(?|1+/(1)|(11+)\1*/\1+)$}})|^)};

But, if like me, you believe that an illegible regex is absolutely unacceptable, you will write that more legibly as:

my $reducible_rx = qr{
  # first match a fraction:
    ^ ( \d+ ) / ( \d+ ) $
  # now for the hard part:
    (?(?{ ( 1 x $1 . "/" . 1 x $2 ) =~ m{
                ^
                (?|    1+      / (1)  # trivial case: GCD=1
                  |  (11+) \1* / \1+  # find the GCD
                )
                 $
            }x
        })
          # more portable version of (*PASS)
     | ^  # more portable version of (*FAIL)
     )
}x;

You can improve maintainability by splitting out the version that matches the unary version from the one that matches the decimal version like this:

# this one assumes unary notation
my $unary_rx = qr{
    ^ 
    (?|   1+       / (1)
      | (11+)  \1* / \1+ 
    ) 
    $
}x;

# this one assumes decimal notation and converts internally
my $decimal_rx = qr{
  # first match a fraction:
    ^ ( \d+ ) / ( \d+ ) $ 
  # now for the hard part:
    (?(?{( 1 x $1 . "/" . 1 x $2 ) =~ $unary_rx})
          # more portable version of (*PASS)
     | ^  # more portable version of (*FAIL) 
     )
}x;

Isn’t that much easier by separating it into two named regexes? That would now make $reducible_rx the same as $decimal_rx, but the unary version is its own thing. That’s how I would do it, but the original poster wanted a single regex, so you’d have to interpolate the nested one for that as I first present above.

Either way, you can plug into the test harness below using:

    if ($frac =~ $reducible_rx) {
        cmp_ok($frac, "ne", reduce($i, $j), "$i/$j is $test");
    } else {
        cmp_ok($frac, "eq", reduce($i, $j), "$i/$j is $test");
    }

And you will see that it is a correct regex that passes all tests, and does so moreover using a single regex, wherefore having now passed all requirements of the original question, I declare Qᴜᴏᴅ ᴇʀᴀᴛ ᴅᴇᴍᴏɴsᴛʀᴀɴᴅᴜᴍ: “Quit, enough done.”