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I don't understand. The end of the proof says r/p is a fraction, presumably because r must be an integer. But why must r be an integer?

There seems to be an implicit assumption that m is an integer, but the explicit assumptions only give the much weaker statement that "m is not a perfect square".




> why must r be an integer?

r is a shorthand for (m-n^2)q-2np, which is an integer because m,n,p,q are all integers.

> There seems to be an implicit assumption that m is an integer, but the explicit assumptions only give the much weaker statement that "m is not a perfect square".

Yes, it would have been more explicit to say "m is an integer that is not a perfect square."

On the other hand, this is pretty clear from the context. This is like looking at a computer program and saying "foo has no side-effect" without stating that "foo is a function".




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