I'm writing floating point numbers to a text file and I'd really appreciate if Python would stop writing numbers like "0.000002" as "2e-6". What can I do?
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What does your text output code look like? – wkl May 29 '12 at 19:51
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2duplicate of this question, has a few good answers http://stackoverflow.com/questions/658763/how-do-i-suppress-scientific-notation-in-python – Kevin DiTraglia May 29 '12 at 19:54
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You could use formatting directives, such as this one:
n = 0.000002
print('{:f}'.format(n))
0.000002
more information about formatting see these Python docs
Or old-style if working pre Python v2.6 (thanks @mgilson and @artSwri)
print('%f' % n)
Levon
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This raises a ValueError on python 2.6 (OS-X) (ValueError: zero length field name in format) – mgilson May 29 '12 at 19:56
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@mgilson: Does it work for you if you replace `'{:f}'` with `'{0:f}'`? – Edward Loper May 29 '12 at 20:02
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1@EdwardLoper -- Yes it does. (one of these days I'm going to get around to learning `.format` in place of `%`) -- I suppose maybe this is the beginning of my education ... – mgilson May 29 '12 at 20:05
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@mgilson I noticed some inconsistencies with v 2.6.5 under Ubuntu compared to 2.7.3 and 3.2.3 under Windows just this morning. 2.6.5 required more specification information, but worked – Levon May 29 '12 at 20:05
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@Levon -- I assumed there would be a way to coax it to work -- I just figured that I'd ask in order to document the differences between python versions in the comments here (at very least) – mgilson May 29 '12 at 20:06
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@mgilson I'm with you (just started yesterday to dig up info on .format .. long time C user I'm very comfy with the whole % thingy) – Levon May 29 '12 at 20:07
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>>> "%f" % 2e-6
'0.000002'
kenm
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@mgilson See the link in KDiTraglia's comment for why 2e-7 "doesn't work" and how you can fix it. – Edward Loper May 29 '12 at 19:59