Quotient and Remainder in Programming Languages
With two choices for the inequality, there are two choices for the remainder, one negative and the other positive. This means that there are also two possible choices for the quotient. In number theory the positive remainder is chosen by convention. But programming languages need not, and different languages have adopted different conventions: C99 and Pascal choose the remainder with the same sign as the dividend a. (Before C99, the C language allowed either choice.) Perl, Python (only modern versions), and Common Lisp choose the remainder with the same sign as the divisor d. Haskell and Scheme offer two functions, remainder and modulo – Fortran has mod and modulo; the former agrees in sign with the dividend, and the latter with the divisor.
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