Question

While programming I often find myself needing to calculate something like:

x = (y / n) + (y % n ? 1 : 0);

Or more explicitly:

x = y / n;
if (y % n != 0) {
   x = x + 1;
}

Is there a more elegant way to achieve this value? Can it be achieved without using a conditional expression?

Answer 1

So, you want the integer division to round up instead of down. You can fake this by adding n-1 to the numerator:

x = (y + n - 1) / n;

That way you shift the value it’ll be rounded down to just enough to give you the desired outcome.