PHP: Meaning of the Percent Sign as Operator

The percent sign is the so-called modulus operator (MOD), which can be used not only in PHP but also in many other programming languages.

The modulus operator returns the remainder of a division operation.

Here are three examples:

• 12 % 10 = 2 (10 fits one times in 12, 2 remains as rest)
• 10 % 5 = 0 (5 fits exactly two times in 10, without any remainder)
• 3 % 7 = 3 (7 does not fit any times in 3, so 3 remains)

This operator respectively the modulo operation can be used, for example, to create recurring rows or series of numbers. For instance, when increasing the variable $i within a loop, $i%2 alternately results in 0 or 1 at each iteration. $i%3 results in 0 in every third pass, and so on.
Last update on 2024-01-14 | Created on 2014-06-07