Arithmetic Operations

Arithmetic operations

Let’s start with the arithmetic operations since they are relatively simplest. Programming languages use regular symbols to denote them:

• + addition
• - subtraction
• / division
• * multiplication

There are two more operations that are often used in programming. These are exponentiation and division with remainder.

Let’s suppose that we want to raise the number a to the power of b. We can write it as a​b​​. Here, a is the base and b is the exponent. If we want to raise two to the power of seven, we write 2​7​​. The same operation in Bash looks like this:

2**7

Calculating the remainder of a division is a complex but essential operation in programming. So, we should consider it in detail.

Let’s suppose that we divide one integer by another. We get a fractional number in the result. The division operation produced a remainder in this case.

Here’s an additional example. Let’s suppose we want to divide the number 10 (the dividend) by 3 (the divisor). If we round the result, we will get 3.33333 (the quotient). The remainder of the division equals 1 in this case. To find it, we should multiply the divisor 3 by the integer part of the quotient 3 (the incomplete quotient). Then, we subtract the result from the dividend 10. It gives us the remainder, which equals 1.

Let’s write our calculations in ...