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From: djones@megatest.UUCP (Dave Jones)
Newsgroups: comp.theory,comp.misc,comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Modulus (Re: hashing function for strings)
Message-ID: <12099@goofy.megatest.UUCP>
Date: 22 Feb 90 00:23:35 GMT
References: <Er$cfg@cs.psu.edu>
Organization: Megatest Corporation, San Jose, Ca
Lines: 18

From article <Er$cfg@cs.psu.edu>, by flee@shire.cs.psu.edu (Felix Lee):
> Dave Jones <djones@megatest.UUCP> wrote:
>>I differ. The first of these, -5 div 3 == -1 is wrong.
> 
> The contrary view is that abs(a/b) != abs(-a/b) is strange.  It
> depends on what you're doing.  I have no problems with either stance.

You've hit the nail on the head.

The contrary 'view' is only that: a view. Many beautiful and consistent
mathematical concepts seem 'strange' when understood only incompletely.
If you didn't sell it back to the bookstore for tuition, get your old
group-theory textbook out of the garage and read the first couple of
chapters. Then tell me what 'abs' has to do with the price of tea
in China.

Several others have told me that it 'depends on what you're doing', but so
far nobody has come up with an example where the contrary view is a win.