Integer division rounding with negatives in C++

Question

According to the May 2008 revision,

You're right:

The binary / operator yields the quotient, and the binary % operator yields the remainder from the division of the first expression by the second. If the second operand of / or % is zero the behavior is undefined; otherwise (a/b)*b + a%b is equal to a. If both operands are nonnegative then the remainder is nonnegative; if not, the sign of the remainder is implementation-defined75).

Note 75 says:

According to work underway toward the revision of ISO C, the preferred algorithm for integer division follows the rules defined in the ISO Fortran standard, ISO/IEC 1539:1991, in which the quotient is always rounded toward zero.

Chances are that C++ will lag C in this respect. As it stands, it's undefined but they have an eye towards changing it.

I work in the same department as Stroustrup and with a member of the committee. Things take AGES to get accomplished, and its endlessly political. If it seems silly, it probably is.

As an update to the other answers:

The last draft of C++11, n3242 which is for most practical purposes identical to the actual C++11 standard, says this in 5.6 point 4 (page 118):

For integral operands the / operator yields the algebraic quotient with any fractional part discarded; (see note 80)

Note 80 states (note that notes are non-normative):

80) This is often called truncation towards zero.

Point 4 goes on to state:

if the quotient a/b is representable in the type of the result, (a/b)*b + a%b is equal to a.

which can be shown to require the sign of a%b to be the same as the sign of a (when not zero).

Just a comment. The current working draft for the C++ standard indeed corrects the "implementation-defined" issue and asks for truncation towards zero. Here is the committee's webpage, and here is the draft. The issue is at page 112.