I've found some strange behaviour in python regarding negative numbers:
>>> a = -5
>>> a % 4
Could anyone explain what's going on?
Unlike C or C++, Python's modulo operator (
%) always return a number having the same sign as the denominator (divisor). Your expression yields 3 because
(-5) % 4 = (-2 × 4 + 3) % 4 = 3.
It is chosen over the C behavior because a nonnegative result is often more useful. An example is to compute week days. If today is Tuesday (day #2), what is the week day N days before? In Python we can compute with
return (2 - N) % 7
but in C, if N ≥ 3, we get a negative number which is an invalid number, and we need to manually fix it up by adding 7:
int result = (2 - N) % 7; return result < 0 ? result + 7 : result;
(See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modulo_operator for how the sign of result is determined for different languages.)
Here's an explanation from Guido van Rossum:
Essentially, it's so that a/b = q with remainder r preserves the relationships b*q + r = a and 0 <= r < b.
There is no one best way to handle integer division and mods with negative numbers. It would be nice if
a/b was the same magnitude and opposite sign of
(-a)/b. It would be nice if
a % b was indeed a modulo b. Since we really want
a == (a/b)*b + a%b, the first two are incompatible.
Which one to keep is a difficult question, and there are arguments for both sides. C and C++ round integer division towards zero (so
a/b == -((-a)/b)), and apparently Python doesn't.
Modulo, equivalence classes for 4:
Here's a link to modulo's behavior with negative numbers. (Yes, I googled it)
As pointed out, Python modulo makes a well-reasoned exception to the conventions of other languages. This gives negative numbers a seamless behavior, especially when used in combination with the
// integer-divide operator, as
% modulo often is (as in math.divmod):
for n in range(-8,8): print n, n//4, n%4
-8 -2 0 -7 -2 1 -6 -2 2 -5 -2 3 -4 -1 0 -3 -1 1 -2 -1 2 -1 -1 3 0 0 0 1 0 1 2 0 2 3 0 3 4 1 0 5 1 1 6 1 2 7 1 3
I also thought it was a strange behavior of Python. It turns out that I was not solving the division well (on paper); I was giving a value of 0 to the quotient and a value of -5 to the remainder. Terrible... I forgot the geometric representation of integers numbers. By recalling the geometry of integers given by the number line, one can get the correct values for the quotient and the remainder, and check that Python's behavior is fine. (Although I assume that you have already resolved your concern a long time ago).