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Count of common multiples of two numbers in a range

Last Updated : 11 Jul, 2025

Given a range from L to R and every Xth tile is painted black and every Yth tile is painted white in that range from L to R. If a tile is painted both white and black, then it is considered to be painted grey. The task is to find the number of tiles that are colored grey in range L to R (both inclusive). 
Examples: 
 

Input: X = 2, Y = 3, L = 6, R = 18
Output: 3
The grey coloured tiles are numbered 6, 12, 18

Input: X = 1, Y = 4, L = 5, R = 10
Output: 1
The only grey coloured tile is 8.


 


Approach: Since every multiple of X is black and every multiple of Y is white. Any tile which is a multiple of both X and Y would be grey. The terms that are divisible by both X and Y are the terms that are divisible by the lcm of X and Y.
Lcm can be found out using the following formula: 
 

lcm = (x*y) / gcd(x, y)


GCD can be computed in logn time using Euclid's algorithm. The number of multiples of lcm in range L to R can be found by using a common trick of: 
 

count(L, R) = count(R) - count(L-1)


Number of terms divisible by K less than N is: 
 

floor(N/K)


Below is the implementation to find the number of grey tiles:
 


Output: 
3

 

Time Complexity: O(log(min(x, y))), where x and y are two parameters of gcd.
 

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