Division Operators in Python

Consider below statements in Python 2.7

Output:

2
-3

First output is fine, but the second one may be surprising if we are coming Java/C++ world. In Python 2.7, the “/” operator works as a floor division for integer arguments. However, the operator / returns a float value if one of the arguments is a float (this is similar to C++)

Output:

2.5
-2.5

The real floor division operator is “//”. It returns floor value for both integer and floating point arguments.

Output:

2
-3
2.0
-3.0

How about Python 3?
Here is another surprise, In Python 3, ‘/’ operator does floating point division for both int and float arguments.

# A Python 3 program to demonstrate use of 
# "/" for both integers and floating points
print (5/2)
print (-5/2)
print (5.0/2)
print (-5.0/2)

Output:

2.5
-2.5
2.5
-2.5

Behavior of “//” is same Python 2.7 and Python 3. See this for example.

This article is contributed by Arpit Agrawal. Please write comments if you find anything incorrect, or you want to share more information about the topic discussed above