Euclidean division

For an integer $a$ and positive integer $b$, Euclidean division writes $a=bq+r$ with unique integer quotient $q$ and remainder $0\le r<b$. For $a\ge 0$, repeated quotient-and-remainder steps yield the digits of a base-p expansion when $b=p$. The uniqueness follows because the difference of two permitted remainders cannot be a nonzero multiple of $b$.