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From: alanf@bruce.OZ (Alan Grant Finlay)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: "modulas" operator in C
Keywords: semantics
Message-ID: <1842@bruce.OZ>
Date: 16 Feb 90 02:05:20 GMT
Organization: Monash Uni. Computer Science, Australia
Lines: 13

After 3 hours of tracking down a bug I found my C compiler didn't implement
the modulas operator "%" properly.  At least that's what I thought until on
further investigation I found this in Kernighan and Ritchie's manual:

	"The binary % operator yields the remainder from division of the
	 first expression by the second."

In short it turns out that the meaning of remainder is machine dependent and
normally this means (-1)%2 results in the value -1.

This is a gripe that probably keeps recurring but specifically I have the
following request.  Would the C community stop referring to this operator as
a modulas operator and call it something else like a "remainder" operator.