Question about slight deviations when using integer division with large integers.

[Cameron Simpson]

On 30Dec2018 23:33, Christian Seberino <cseberino at gmail.com> wrote:
>Thanks.  I didn’t post new code.  I was just referring back to original
>post.

I think Ian looked up the first post on Google Groups, where your code 
was evident. The message was incomplete when it got here (the mailing 
list); I don't know why.

>I need to duplicate the exact behavior of Java’s BigIntegers.
>I’m guessing difference between Java and Python is that Java 
>BigIntegers do
>not switch to floor for negatives.
>Possible to tweak rounding of Python to be like Java?

Directly but hacking the int type? Probably not. What you probably want 
to do is to make a JavaBigInteger Python class which subclasses int, and 
change its operator implementation. Eg (totally untested):

    class JavaBigInteger(int):

        def __floordiv__(self, other):
            sign = 1
            if self < 0:
                self = -self
                sign = -1
            if other < 0:
                other = - other
                sign *= -1
            result = self // other
            result *= sign
            return JavaBigOnteger(result)

i.e. convert both operands to positive values, divide, adjust the sign.

Some notes:

Changing __floordiv__ needs to have matching changes to __divmod__ and 
__mod__ because they're supposed to be consistent.

You probably also need to implement __truediv__, probably a lot like 
__floordiv__. There are also __rtruediv__ and __rfloordiv__ and __rmod__ 
and __rdivmod__.

You need to turn whatever integers you're working with into 
JavaBigIntegers to make them use the new operator methods, and those 
methods should themselves return JavaBigIntegers to keep the behaviour:

    # x and y are ints
    x = 11
    y = -2
    print(x // y)

    # you already have x and y from somewhere, eg a file
    # they are ints, make new JavaBigIntegers from them
    xj = JavaBigInteger(x)
    yj = JavaBigInteger(y)
    print(xj // yj)

Cheers,
Cameron Simpson <cs at cskk.id.au>