Circular Arrays

Fri, 11 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Most developers are familiar with the modulo opertor, it is often presented in an example that determines if a number is odd or even as shown in the code below taken from Testing whether a value is odd or even.

function isEven(n) {
   return n % 2 == 0;
}

function isOdd(n) {
   return Math.abs(n % 2) == 1;
}

Determining if a number is odd or even is just one use case for the modulo operator. Another use case that I learn a while back is that you can use the modulo operator to set a range, a boundary if you will, allowing you to rotate the array, this is because fundamentally A mod B is between 0 and B - 1 or another way to think about it, 0 <= A < B.

Modulo on Yunier's Wiki

Circular Arrays