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divmod with negative Decimal values
I am using Python 3.11.4.
Can anyone explain why Decimal values behave differently from ints when
negative values are used in divmod as follows:

>>> divmod(-1, 60)
(-1, 59)                                                      # as expected
>>> divmod(Decimal("-1"), 60)
(Decimal('-0'), Decimal('-1'))

Best wishes
Rob Cliffe
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Re: divmod with negative Decimal values [ In reply to ]
On 8/18/2023 5:14 AM, Rob Cliffe via Python-list wrote:
> divmod(Decimal("-1"), 60)

It's not divmod per se, but the modulus operation:

from decimal import Decimal
D1 = Decimal(-1)
D1 % 60 # Decimal(-1)

fmod() performs the same way:

from math import fmod
fmod(-1, 60) # -1.0

From the Python docs on math.fmod:

"math.fmod(x, y)
Return fmod(x, y), as defined by the platform C library. Note that the
Python expression x % y may not return the same result. The intent of
the C standard is that fmod(x, y) be exactly (mathematically; to
infinite precision) equal to x - n*y for some integer n such that the
result has the same sign as x and magnitude less than abs(y). Python’s x
% y returns a result with the sign of y instead, and may not be exactly
computable for float arguments. For example, fmod(-1e-100, 1e100) is
-1e-100, but the result of Python’s -1e-100 % 1e100 is 1e100-1e-100,
which cannot be represented exactly as a float, and rounds to the
surprising 1e100. For this reason, function fmod() is generally
preferred when working with floats, while Python’s x % y is preferred
when working with integers."

I'm not sure this is helpful in a practical way here ...




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