# How many squares is passing the diagonal

I need help with this question

I have problem like this: I have rectangle with fixed size NxM, such that N, M are positive natural numbers. And this rectangle of size NxM is splited on squares with size 1x1, actually if the rectangle sizes are 3x3, it is splited on 9 squares. This picture is showing.

And actually the picture is also showing the thing i want to find, the number of small squares in which the diagonal of the rectangle is passing. In all 4 variants it is passing in 4 squares.

First, suppose that $N$ and $M$ have no common factor. Then the diagonal line doesn't go through any intersections, so each time it crosses a horizontal or vertical grid line, it adds $1$ to the number of squares touched. And to get from the top left to the bottom right, it must pass through $N-1$ vertical grid lines and $M-1$ horizintal grid lines. Counting the orginal square in the top left, this gives a total of $1+(N-1)+(M-1)=N+M-1$ squares touched. This formula applies to your first and second diagrams.
Now suppose that $N$ and $M$ have a common factor. Let $q=(N,M)$ be the largest common factor of $N$ and $M$. Then $N/q$ and $M/q$ have no common factor, so we can break the problem up into $q$ smaller rectangles strung along the diagonal, each of size $N/q\times M/q$; and in each such rectangle the number of squares visited is $N/q+M/q-1$. So the total number of squares visited is $q\times(N/q+M/q-1) = N+M-q$.
$$N+M-(N,M)$$