Modulo

Modulo#

Modulo Operator %#

The modulo operator % is common in programming languanges, but not so much in our typical engineering problems. It turns out it can be very useful in iteration loops. It’s actually quite simple: the expression a % b returns the remainder of a/b. That’s it!

Take a look at the following examples that illustrate the operator:

print(6 % 5)
print(5 % 6)
print(1 % 10)
print(5 % 5)
print(0 % 5)

1
5
1
0
0

You can’t divide by zero, just as in normal division.

Below is an illustration for how the modulo is useful for doing things in a for loop that doesn’t need to be done on every iteration.

for i in range(100):
    if i%25 == 0:
        print(i)

0
25
50
75

\(\text{Task 2.1:}\)

Experiment with the two Python cells above and make sure you understand what the modulo operator is and how it works.

We won’t do anything else with % now, but will apply this in the last task of the assignment.

By Robert Lanzafame, Delft University of Technology. CC BY 4.0, more info on the Credits page of Workbook.

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