Rabin Karp Algorithm Negative Hash - c++

Question

I have this Rabin Karp implementation. Now the only thing I'm doing for rolling hash is subtract power*source[i] from the sourceHash. power is 31^target.size()-1 % mod
But I can't understand why we're adding mod to sourceHash when it becomes negative. I have tried adding other values but it doesn't work and it only works when we add mod. Why is this? Is there a specific reason why we're adding mod and not anything else (like a random big number for example).
int rbk(string source, string target){
int m = target.size();
int n = source.size();
int mod = 128;
int prime = 11;
int power = 1;
int targetHash = 0, sourceHash = 0;
for(int i = 0; i < m - 1; i++){
power =(power*prime) % mod;
}
for(int i = 0; i < target.size(); i++){
sourceHash = (sourceHash*prime + source[i]) % mod;
targetHash = (targetHash*prime + target[i]) % mod;
}
for(int i = 0; i < n-m+1; i++){
if(targetHash == sourceHash){
bool flag = true;
for(int j = 0; j < m; j++){
if(source[i+j] != target[j]){
flag = false;
break;
}
}
if(flag){
return 1;
}
}
if(i < n-m){
sourceHash = (prime*(sourceHash - source[i]*power) + source[i+m]) % mod;
if(sourceHash < 0){
sourceHash += mod;
}
}
}
return -1;
}

Answer 1

When using modulo arithmetics (mod n) we have just n distinct numbers: 0, 1, 2, ..., n - 1.
All the other numbers which out of 0 .. n - 1 are equal to some number in 0 .. n - 1:
-n ~ 0
-n + 1 ~ 1
-n + 2 ~ 2
...
-2 ~ n - 2
-1 ~ n - 1
or
n ~ 0
n + 1 ~ 1
n + 2 ~ 2
...
2 * n ~ 0
2 * n + 1 ~ 0
In general case A ~ B if and only if (A - B) % n = 0 (here % stands for remainder).
When implementing Rabin Karp algorithm we can have two potential problems:
Hash can be too large, we can face integer overflow
Negative remainder can be implemented in different way on different compilers: -5 % 3 == -2 == 1
To deal with both problems, we can normalize remainder and operate with numbers within safe 0 .. n - 1 range only.
For arbitrary value A we can put
A = (A % n + n) % n;