Why does integer division in C# return an integer and not a float?

Does anyone know why integer division in C# returns an integer and not a float? What is the idea behind it? (Is it only a legacy of C/C++?)

In C#:

float x = 13 / 4;   
//== operator is overridden here to use epsilon compare
if (x == 3.0)
   print 'Hello world';

Result of this code would be:

'Hello world'

Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as integer division (division by definition is an operation which produces a rational number, integers are a very small subset of which.)

While it is common for new programmer to make this mistake of performing integer division when they actually meant to use floating point division, in actual practice integer division is a very common operation. If you are assuming that people rarely use it, and that every time you do division you'll always need to remember to cast to floating points, you are mistaken.

First off, integer division is quite a bit faster, so if you only need a whole number result, one would want to use the more efficient algorithm.

Secondly, there are a number of algorithms that use integer division, and if the result of division was always a floating point number you would be forced to round the result every time. One example off of the top of my head is changing the base of a number. Calculating each digit involves the integer division of a number along with the remainder, rather than the floating point division of the number.

Because of these (and other related) reasons, integer division results in an integer. If you want to get the floating point division of two integers you'll just need to remember to cast one to a double/float/decimal.

See C# specification. There are three types of division operators

• Integer division
• Floating-point division
• Decimal division

In your case we have Integer division, with following rules applied:

The division rounds the result towards zero, and the absolute value of the result is the largest possible integer that is less than the absolute value of the quotient of the two operands. The result is zero or positive when the two operands have the same sign and zero or negative when the two operands have opposite signs.

I think the reason why C# use this type of division for integers (some languages return floating result) is hardware - integers division is faster and simpler.

Each data type is capable of overloading each operator. If both the numerator and the denominator are integers, the integer type will perform the division operation and it will return an integer type. If you want floating point division, you must cast one or more of the number to floating point types before dividing them. For instance:

int x = 13;
int y = 4;
float x = (float)y / (float)z;

or, if you are using literals:

float x = 13f / 4f;

Keep in mind, floating points are not precise. If you care about precision, use something like the decimal type, instead.