Storing the result of a method in a variable

Question

For the past few months, I switched to programming in a functional language (Racket), and recently restarted coding in Java, so I'm a bit confused regarding a few concepts.

The following (simplified version) code is an implementation of euclid's algorithm. It works just fine. My problem with it is the return statement. Is it possible in java to store the results of a method in a variable? For example,in my code, I initialized the variable result to store the gcd of two numbers. But that returns an incorrect value. However, if I remove the variable result, I get the correct value for the gcd, which brings me to my 2nd question: return statements. I don't quite understand what the return statement is doing here. The only reason I have it in the 1st place was because I was aiming to store the result of the method Recursion in a variable. But as far as I've tried it, and seems to be only messing up my code.

Primary objective: To store the result of the gcd of two numbers in a variable, so I can re-use it elsewhere.

Is there is a way to make this possible? Any suggestions would be appreciated!

import java.util.*;

public class StoringResults
{
    public static void main(String[]args)
    {
        int big,small,remainder,gcd;  //Variables declared.
        Scanner sc=new Scanner(System.in);

/* Use enters input */
        //Big is the larger number.

        //Small is the smaller of the two.

        remainder=big%small;

        int result=recursion(big,small,remainder);
        System.out.println("FINAL RESULT:"+result);
    }

    //recursive method.
    public static int recursion(int big,int small,int remainder)
    {
        remainder=big%small;
        if(remainder==0)
        {
            System.out.println(small);
        }
        else
        {
            int dummyvar=remainder;
            big=small;
            small=dummyvar;
            recursion(big,small,remainder);
        }
        return remainder;
    }
}

Answer 1

As my comment already stated your logic is faulty.

And your statement if I remove the variable result,I get the correct value for the gcd is plain wrong. You get the correct result printed but not returned. And that is caused by the fact that you return the wrong value.

1. remove the remainder from the method signature since your first statement is assigning something to it
2. return the correct value: smaller instead of remained
3. return in the else branch

That will result in the following code:

public static int recursion(int big,int small)
{
    int remainder=big%small;
    if(remainder==0)
    {
        System.out.println(small);
    }
    else
    {
        big=small;
        small=remainder;
        return recursion(big,small);
    }
    return small;
}    

Shortening results in

public static int recursion(int big, int small) {
    int remainder = big % small;
    if(remainder == 0) {
        return small;
    } else {
        return recursion(small,remainder);
    }
}