Divide two numbers without using / or % and return quotient.

Question

Zach · Accepted Answer

You have a counter and then subtract the divisor from the dividend and add one to the counter. You repeat this until subtracting gives you a negative number. The quotient is whatever your counter is up to and the remainder is whatever the dividend is up to.
16/3:
16-3=13 | counter = 1
13-3=10 | counter = 2
10-3=7 | counter = 3
7-3=4 | counter = 4
4-3=1 | counter = 5
1-3=-2 | counter = 5 (number is too low so we don't increment counter. Instead the quotient is 5 and the remainder is 1)

Marcin · Answer

Version in Java

public class Divide {
    String divide(int a, int b) {
        if(b !=0) {
            int counter = 0;
            while (a >= b) {
                a = a - b;
                counter++;
            }
            return Integer.toString(counter);
        }else
            return "Can't divide by zero";
    }
}

Taher Benisa · Answer

int DivideWithoutUsingDivision(int x, int y)
{
	int count = 0;
	int remainder = 0;
	while (x >= y)
	{
		x -= y;
		remainder = x;
		count++;
	}

	return remainder;	// quotient
}

Anonymous · Answer

I answered by counting number of multiples required but the interviewer said that I had to implement his way which was by subtraction and that my way was incorrect.

Soumil Kulkarni · Answer

"""
Python code : using subtraction 
"""
a=31
b=5
quotient=0
while (a>=b):
	a=a-b
	quotient +=1
print "Quotient is : %d"%quotient
print "Remainder is : %d"%a

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