What is the result of % in Python?

Question

What does the % in a calculation? I can\'t seem to work out what it does.

Does it work out a percent of the calculation for example: 4 % 2

Answer 1

Somewhat off topic, the % is also used in string formatting operations like %= to substitute values into a string:

>>> x = 'abc_%(key)s_'
>>> x %= {'key':'value'}
>>> x 
'abc_value_'

Again, off topic, but it seems to be a little documented feature which took me awhile to track down, and I thought it was related to Pythons modulo calculation for which this SO page ranks highly.