That's an inherent property of both the modulus interpretation and the remainder interpretation. Haskell does it right. Instead of having operators like %, it

That's an inherent property of both the modulus interpretation and the remainder interpretation. Haskell does it right. Instead of having operators like %, it gives the programmer choice to choose either the modulus or the remainder. Using GP's example: ghci> 2 `div` (-5) -1 ghci> 2 `mod` (-5) -3 ghci> 2 `quot` (-5) 0 ghci> 2 `rem` (-5) 2 And we have both (x `quot` y)*y + (x `rem` y) == x and (x `div` y)*y + (x `mod` y) == x