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I've occasionally tried to work out a sensible rationale for the non-mathematical meaning based on the mathematical one. Perhaps this is etymologically unsound,

I've occasionally tried to work out a sensible rationale for the non-mathematical meaning based on the mathematical one. Perhaps this is etymologically unsound, but hey, words are fun. But how do you get from "remainder when divided by" to "except"? I guess `x % y` gives you "the leftovers," which is close enough to "except."

dllthomas 14y ago
Oh, that's straightforward. In a truly mathematical context, modulo isn't really an operator per se. You can say, 10 = 7 modulo 3 Which is kinda, "10 = 7, except someone may have added some number of threes to each" - so, "10 = 7, but for the threes"