What does the %
do in a calculation? I can't seem to work out what it does.
Does it work out a percent of the calculation for example: 4 % 2
is apparently equal to 0. How?
The
%
(modulo) operator yields the remainder from the division of the first argument by the second. The numeric arguments are first converted to a common type. A zero right argument raises theZeroDivisionError
exception. The arguments may be floating point numbers, e.g.,3.14%0.7
equals0.34
(since3.14
equals4*0.7 + 0.34
.) The modulo operator always yields a result with the same sign as its second operand (or zero); the absolute value of the result is strictly smaller than the absolute value of the second operand [2].
Taken from https://docs.python.org/reference/expressions.html#binary-arithmetic-operations
Example 1:
6%2
evaluates to 0
because there's no remainder if 6 is divided by 2 (3 times).
Example 2: 7%2
evaluates to 1
because there's a remainder of 1
when 7 is divided by 2 (3 times).
So to summarise that, it returns the remainder of a division operation, or 0
if there is no remainder. So 6%2
means find the remainder of 6 divided by 2.