What does the % operator do in Ruby in N % 2?

Question

if counter % 2 == 1 I am trying to decode this line - it's a Rails project and I am trying to figure out what the % does in this if statement.

Answer 1

% is the modulo operator. The result of counter % 2 is the remainder of counter / 2.

n % 2 is often a good way of determining if a number n is even or odd. If n % 2 == 0, the number is even (because no remainder means that the number is evenly divisible by 2); if n % 2 == 1, the number is odd.