Exercise 2.97

Implement this algorithm as a procedure reduce-terms that takes two term lists n and d as arguments and returns a list nn, dd, which are n and d reduced to lowest terms via the algorithm given above. Also write a procedure reduce-poly, analogous to add-poly, that checks to see if the two polys have the same variable. If so, reduce-poly strips off the variable and passes the problem to reduce-terms, then reattaches the variable to the two term lists supplied by reduce-terms.

Define a procedure analogous to reduce-terms that does what the original make-rat did for integers:

(define (reduce-integers n d)
  (let ((g (gcd n d)))
    (list (/ n g) (/ d g))))

and define reduce as a generic operation that calls apply-generic to dispatch to either reduce-poly (for polynomial arguments) or reduce-integers (for scheme-number arguments). You can now easily make the rational-arithmetic package reduce fractions to lowest terms by having make-rat call reduce before combining the given numerator and denominator to form a rational number. The system now handles rational expressions in either integers or polynomials. To test your program, try the example at the beginning of this extended exercise:

(define p1 (make-polynomial 'x '((1 1)(0 1))))
(define p2 (make-polynomial 'x '((3 1)(0 -1))))
(define p3 (make-polynomial 'x '((1 1))))
(define p4 (make-polynomial 'x '((2 1)(0 -1))))

(define rf1 (make-rational p1 p2))
(define rf2 (make-rational p3 p4))

(add rf1 rf2)

See if you get the correct answer, correctly reduced to lowest terms.