Divide¶

Status: Stable

documented, exercised by the test suite and/or worked examples, with no known limitations recorded.

Description¶

x / y or Divide[x, y] represents x / y; rewritten by the evaluator to
Times[x, Power[y, -1]] so it inherits Times's flattening and ordering.

Examples¶

No verified examples yet for this function.

Implementation notes¶

builtin_divide (src/arithmetic.c) evaluates Divide[num, den]. It special-cases numerics: if either operand is a Real, it computes a double quotient (coercing integer/bigint operands via mpz_get_d), emitting Power::infy and returning ComplexInfinity on a zero denominator. If both are exact integers/rationals (is_rational), it forms the reduced rational n1*d2 / d1*n2 via make_rational, handling x/0 -> ComplexInfinity and 0/0 -> Indeterminate with the matching diagnostics. Otherwise it falls back to the symbolic canonical form Times[num, Power[den, -1]], which the evaluator then simplifies. (Divide carries no Hold attributes, so arguments arrive pre-evaluated.)

Attributes: Listable, NumericFunction, Protected.

Implementation status¶

Stable — documented, exercised by the test suite and/or worked examples, with no known limitations recorded.

References¶

Source: src/arithmetic.c
Specification: docs/spec/builtins/arithmetic.md

Notes & additional examples¶

Worked examples¶

In[1]:= 10/4
Out[1]= 5/2

In[2]:= Divide[10, 4]
Out[2]= 5/2

In[3]:= a/b
Out[3]= a/b

Notes¶

x / y is rewritten by the evaluator to Times[x, Power[y, -1]], so it inherits Times's flattening and ordering; integer quotients auto-reduce to an exact Rational.