Quotient 1.5

A quotient may extend off the screen of your calculator, such as when you divide 1 by 7. It turns out, however, that at least some part of what follows the decimal point repeats indefinitely.

This is what I grew up calling a repeating decimal — that is to say, a portion of the decimal repeats itself infinitely as a repetend. As an example, the fraction ¹/₇ equals 0.142857142857142857142…… In this case, 142857, or any wrapped variant (such as 428571 or 857142), would be the repetend due to its being the smallest repeating chunk.

This is where Quotient comes in. This program writes the quotient of any integer division — to a user-specified level of decimal precision (which can extend into the hundreds of thousands and beyond) — into a text box, from which it can be copied to the Clipboard, or exported (along with the rest of the calculation parameters) to a text file.

A repetend locator completes the program's functionality, employing an algorithm with the ability to determine a repeating part in any finite-length string, which the result text box provides. The only known issue with this is, of course, unavoidable: while determining the repetend of a short quotient string may be easy, it can take a long time to determine that of a longer one. It works, however, and can save a lot of time.

What's New in Quotient 1.5?

• Revised and vastly improved the repetend locator.
• Implemented yet another new user interface to accommodate redesigned repetend functionality.
• Fixed some minor appearance issues with export output.
• Removed Sparkle version-updater framework.
• Updated and improved AppleScript support.
• Updated online help.

General Information

• Last Modified: 7 August 2008
• Compatibility: Universal Binary; requires Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard"
• License: BSD