I am wondering how and why the operator %% and %/% are for the remainder and the quotient.
Is there any reason or history that R developer had given them the meaning they have?
> 0 %/% 10 [1] 0 > 30 %% 10 [1] 0 > 35 %/% 10 [1] 3 > 35 %% 10 [1] 5 3 Answers
In R, you can assign your own operators using %[characters]%. A trivial example:
'%p%' <- function(x, y){x^2 + y} 2 %p% 3 # result: 7 While I agree with BlueTrin that %% is pretty standard, I have a suspicion %/% may have something to do with the sort of operator definitions I showed above - perhaps it was easier to implement, and makes sense: %/% means do a special sort of division (integer division)
Have a look at the examples below for a clearer understanding of the differences between the different operators:
> # Floating Division: > 5/2 [1] 2.5 > > # Integer Division: > 5%/%2 [1] 2 > > # Remainder: > 5%%2 [1] 1 I think it is because % has often be associated with the modulus operator in many programming languages.
It is the case, e.g., in C, C++, C# and Java, and many other languages which derive their syntax from C (C itself took it from B).
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