Once I had to migrate an application from Python to Javascript. Even though the code was copied almost exactly, tests were failing. After some time I finally found out that the % operator is not the same in Javascript and Python. It’s the Modulo operator for Python, but the Remainder for Javascript. Luckily, the fix is rather easy, you can find it at the end of this post.
Quick refresh on % operator
Most tutorials for beginners in programming at some point teach to use the operator % to get the remainder after dividing one number by the other.
Examples:
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7 % 5 = 2
4 % 2 = 0
And you can verify it quickly:
- divide 7 by 5
7 / 5 = 1.4 - round the result (in this case to 1) and multiply by the divisor (5)
1 * 5 = 5 - 7 - 5 = 2
With the % operator, you can check for any positive integer if it’s divisible by another positive integer.
This is handy in checking if the number is odd/even (by checking if it’s divisible by 2):
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const isEven = number % 2 === 0
Why should I care?
The % is usually applied to positive integers. But the difference appears when considering negative values.
Let’s see them in action.
Javascript uses % as the Remainder operator:
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console.log(7 % 5);
// output: 2
console.log(-7 % 5);
// output: -2
console.log(7 % -5);
// output: 2
console.log(-7 % -5);
// output: -2
Python uses % as the Modulo operator:
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print(7 % 5)
# output: 2
print(-7 % 5)
# output: 3
print(7 % -5)
# output: -3
print(-7 % -5)
# output: -2
Definitions
For the operation
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n % d
where:
- n - dividend
- d - divisor
Modulo/Remainder is calculated with the formula:
n - d * q
- Remainder uses the truncate of the result of the
n / dto get quotient q - Modulo uses the floor of the result of the
n / dto get quotient q
When both operands are of the same sign, floor and truncate will produce the same result, otherwise, they can differ by at most 1:
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floor(-1.5) = -2
truncate(-1.5) = -1
There are other ways to calculate the quotient, but truncated and floored are the most used ones. For a complete list and to check what your programming language uses, check this Wiki page.
Calculation
-7 % 5
- the modulo is calculated as:
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-7 - (5 * (floor(-7/5)))=
-7 -(5*(-2))=
-7 + 10 =
3
- the remainder is calculated as
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-7 - 5 * (truncate(-7/5)) =
-7 -(5*(-1)) =
-7 + 5 =
-2
Example of Remainder
The remainder is useful to check if a number is divisible by another number.
Let’s say that you have a list that represents days in a week (Monday to Sunday), going from 0 to 6:
[0 1 2 3 4 5 6]
If the current day is Friday (4), how would you calculate what day would it be after 18 days?
You could use either modulo or remainder like this:
(4 + 18) % 7 = 1
So, the result is Tuesday (2).
Example of Modulo
That’s great, but what if you need to calculate what day it was 20 days ago?
In this case, you could use the modulo to find out that:
(4 - 20) mod 7 = 5
And the result is Saturday (6).
Intuition for remainder and modulo
For the non-negative numbers, you can see how the numbers wrap around the range 0 - 6:
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n
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
n % 7
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 0 1 2
But if we include negative numbers, we’ll get:
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n
-9 -8 -7 -6 -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
n rem 7
-2 -1 -0 -6 -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 0 1 2
n mod 7
5 6 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 0 1 2
For the negative values you can see that the remainder is producing the negative values that repeat once they reach the limit (remember d in n % d),
Where modulo is repeating the same sequence we had in a positive spectrum ([0,1,2,3,4,5,6] in our case).
Convert from Remainder to Modulo
The fix I mentioned at the beginning of the post is actually quite a simple one.
Here is the function that will calculate the modulo of numbers a and b:
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function modulo(a, b) {
return ((a % b) + b) % b;
}