Why does integer division in C return an integer and not a float

Question

Does anyone know why integer division in C  returns an integer and not a float  What is the idea behind it   Is it only a legacy of C C      In C    float x   13   4          operator is overridden here to use epsilon compare if  x    3 0     print  Hello world     Result of this code would be    Hello world    Strictly speaking  there is no such thing as integer division  division by definition is an operation which produces a rational number  integers are a very small subset of which

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Since you don t use any suffix  the literals 13 and 4 are interpreted as integer      Manual       If the literal has no suffix  it has the first of these types in which its value can be represented  int  uint  long  ulong    Thus  since you declare 13 as integer  integer division will be performed      Manual       For an operation of the form x   y  binary operator overload resolution is applied to select a specific operator implementation  The operands are converted to the parameter types of the selected operator  and the type of the result is the return type of the operator       The predefined division operators are listed below  The operators all compute the quotient of x and y       Integer division   int operator   int x  int y   uint operator   uint x  uint y   long operator   long x  long y   ulong operator   ulong x  ulong y      And so rounding down occurs      The division rounds the result towards zero  and the absolute value of the result is the largest possible integer that is less than the absolute value of the quotient of the two operands  The result is zero or positive when the two operands have the same sign and zero or negative when the two operands have opposite signs    If you do the following   int x   13f   4f    You ll receive a compiler error  since a floating-point division  the   operator of 13f  results in a float  which cannot be cast to int implicitly   If you want the division to be a floating-point division  you ll have to make the result a float   float x   13   4    Notice that you ll still divide integers  which will implicitly be cast to float  the result will be 3 0  To explicitly declare the operands as float  using the f suffix  13f  4f

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The result will always be of type that has the greater range of the numerator and the denominator  The exceptions are byte and short  which produce int  Int32    var a    byte 5    byte 2      2  Int32  var b    short 5    byte 2     2  Int32  var c   5   2                  2  Int32  var d   5   2U                 2  UInt32  var e   5L   2U                2  Int64  var f   5L   2UL               2  UInt64  var g   5F   2UL               2 5  Single float  var h   5F   2D                2 5  Double  var i   5 0   2F               2 5  Double  var j   5M   2                 2 5  Decimal  var k   5M   2F                Not allowed   There is no implicit conversion between floating-point types and the decimal type  so division between them is not allowed  You have to explicitly cast and decide which one you want  Decimal has more precision and a smaller range compared to floating-point types

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While it is common for new programmer to make this mistake of performing integer division when they actually meant to use floating point division  in actual practice integer division is a very common operation   If you are assuming that people rarely use it  and that every time you do division you ll always need to remember to cast to floating points  you are mistaken   First off  integer division is quite a bit faster  so if you only need a whole number result  one would want to use the more efficient algorithm   Secondly  there are a number of algorithms that use integer division  and if the result of division was always a floating point number you would be forced to round the result every time   One example off of the top of my head is changing the base of a number   Calculating each digit involves the integer division of a number along with the remainder  rather than the floating point division of the number   Because of these  and other related  reasons  integer division results in an integer   If you want to get the floating point division of two integers you ll just need to remember to cast one to a double float decimal

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Might be useful   double a   5 0 2 0     Console WriteLine  a           2 5  double b   5 2     Console WriteLine  b           2  int c   5 2     Console WriteLine  c           2  double d   5f 2f     Console WriteLine  d           2 5

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See C  specification  There are three types of division operators   Integer division Floating-point division Decimal division   In your case we have Integer division  with following rules applied      The division rounds the result towards zero  and the absolute value of   the result is the largest possible integer that is less than the   absolute value of the quotient of the two operands  The result is zero   or positive when the two operands have the same sign and zero or   negative when the two operands have opposite signs    I think the reason why C  use this type of division for integers  some languages return floating result  is hardware - integers division is faster and simpler

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It s just a basic operation    Remember when you learned to divide  In the beginning we solved 9 6   1 with remainder 3  9   6    1    true 9   6    3    true  The  -operator in combination with the  -operator are used to retrieve those values

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As a little trick to know what you are obtaining you can use var  so the compiler will tell you the type to expect  int a   1  int b   2  var result   a b   your compiler will tell you that result would be of type int here

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Each data type is capable of overloading each operator   If both the numerator and the denominator are integers  the integer type will perform the division operation and it will return an integer type   If you want floating point division  you must cast one or more of the number to floating point types before dividing them   For instance   int x   13  int y   4  float x    float y    float z    or  if you are using literals   float x   13f   4f    Keep in mind  floating points are not precise   If you care about precision  use something like the decimal type  instead

[c#] Why does integer division in C# return an integer and not a float?

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