# Solving congruences using PARI

I'm having trouble finding info in the docs about how to solve a system of congruences. The closest I can find is 'matsolvemod' in here: http://pari.math.u-bordeaux.fr/dochtml/html.stable/Vectors,_matrices,_linear_algebra_and_sets.html

but I'm not sure if that's exactly what it's used for because I don't really understand where the M parameter comes in with a system of congruences. Is there a function for solving a system of linear equations of the form:

x = a1 (mod b1) x = a2 (mod b2) ... x = an (mod bn)

(or even for just 2 or 3 congruences is fine)

EDIT: Okay, I've tried just using the algorithm and basic arithmetic instead of finding a function to do it for me automatically but am receiving an error:

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Did you read the algorithm outlined on the Wikipedia page I linked in your previous question? There's a walkthrough with 2 congruences (pairwise coprime, though) and then for the general case. Then you can implement it using only standard arithmetic and a modular inverse algorithm (which PARI should have). If this is about using a built-in function of PARI/GP to solve general systems of congruences, it's off-topic here. –  Thomas Mar 17 '13 at 23:03
I've edited the comment to show how I've attempted to solve the example system of congruence you gave in my last question –  user1136342 Mar 18 '13 at 1:20
I don't know much about PARI/GP but I think Mod does more than just take the value of a modulo b (it changes its datatype, too). Can you try just using a%b instead? Though I'm not sure how to get the modular inverse in that case, you'll need to look that up. I'm sorry, I'm not of much help - I don't use PARI/GP. –  Thomas Mar 18 '13 at 1:30
That works- thanks! Both of your answers have been really helpful to me even though you don't use PARI/GP –  user1136342 Mar 18 '13 at 1:37
? chinese(Mod(42,91), Mod(11, 37))

The previous example solves for $x \equiv 42 \pmod{91}$ and $x \equiv 11 \pmod{37}$, which is unique modulo $91 \cdot 37 = 3367$. You can use "raise" to promote a Mod object to the integers.