math.fmod(a, b)
The math.fmod function returns the modulus of two numbers as defined in the C platform library. This assumes that the modulus of two numbers a and b is defined as the result of a - n * b for some integer n such that the result has the same sign as a and a magnitude less than the absolute value of b .
Note that this criterion differs from the one used in Python's % operator, which -in addition to applying a different method for the calculation- returns a result that has the sign of b.
The result returned by the math.fmod function is a real number.
The modulus of 11 and 4 is 3.0:
math.fmod(11, 4)
3.0
Note that the result is a real number even though the arguments passed to the function are integers.
In this case, the result obtained matches the one returned by the Python % operator:
11 % 4
3
The modulus of -11 and 4 is -3.0:
math.fmod(-11, 4)
-3.0
In this second example, the result obtained does not match the one returned by the % operator in Python:
-11 % 4
1
Other examples are shown below:
math.fmod(-11, -4)
-3.0
math.fmod(1, -4)
1.0
