The remainder operator (%
) returns the remainder left over when one
operand is divided by a second operand. It always takes the sign of the dividend.
The source for this interactive example is stored in a GitHub repository. If you'd like to contribute to the interactive examples project, please clone https://github.com/mdn/interactive-examples and send us a pull request.
Note that while in most languages, ‘%’ is a remainder operator, in some (e.g. Python,
Perl) it is a modulo operator. For positive values, the two are equivalent, but
when the dividend and divisor are of different signs, they give different results. To
obtain a modulo in JavaScript, in place of a % n
, use
((a % n ) + n ) % n
.
Syntax
Operator: var1 % var2
Examples
Remainder with positive dividend
12 % 5 // 2
1 % -2 // 1
1 % 2 // 1
2 % 3 // 2
5.5 % 2 // 1.5
Remainder with negative dividend
-12 % 5 // -2
-1 % 2 // -1
-4 % 2 // -0
Remainder with NaN
NaN % 2 // NaN
Remainder with Infinity
Infinity % 2 // NaN
Infinity % 0 // NaN
Infinity % Infinity // NaN
Specifications
Browser compatibility
BCD tables only load in the browser