Write a program to find remainder of dividing two numbers, without using % operator? In Java

Question

How to find the remainder of dividing two numbers without using the modulo operator!! My teacher gave me this exact exercise and It\'s only my 5th lecture in a course calle

Answer 1

Well, you could do what the modulo operator typically does internally.

Inside a loop, substract b from a repeatedly. When this is no longer possible, the number you're left with is your answer.

Here's a code example. If you're trying to accomplish this for decimal numbers, be mindful of rounding errors for floating-point values.

double result = a;
while(result - b >= 0) {
    result -= b;
}
return result;

Note that if you're working with integers, and you're allowed to use the division operator, you don't need to use a loop.

However, do keep in mind that all that division does is repeated subtraction. If this is for pedagogical purposes, I think it's cooler to do it my way.