Division in python 2.7

Question

This gives output as 0:

print -4/-5

Whereas:

print float(-4/-5)

This gives output as 0.0 . The required output is 0.8

Use python 3.It gives the right answer 0.8. – Randhawa Mar 28 '16 at 07:26 — Randhawa, Mar 28 '16 at 07:26
@The6thSense, it's Python 2 due to what she gets. – Nikita Mar 28 '16 at 07:26 — Nikita, Mar 28 '16 at 07:26

score 2 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:15

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You are doing integer division instead of floating point division. It has been answered already: Python division .

Casting types after the division doesn't make sense.

float(4)/float(5)

Or simpler

4./5.

should do the trick

edited May 23 '17 at 12:15

Community

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answered Mar 28 '16 at 07:25

jhoepken

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score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 28 '16 at 07:29

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To understand,

print float(-4/-5)

Bracket is calculated first. Value given to float is 0. Typecasting 0 to 0.0

This will give the required output:

print float(-4)/-5

answered Mar 28 '16 at 07:29

Sarthak Agarwal

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aren't you Sarthak Agarwal the TOPPER!? – Sanj Mar 28 '16 at 07:41
No, same name. :) @Sanj – Sarthak Agarwal Mar 28 '16 at 07:44

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 28 '16 at 07:25

/ does integer division.

To get your desired output, the operands should be float (either or both).

-4.0 / -5.0 = 0.8

To explain the second code snippet, the first one to be evaluated is the operation -4 / -5 which results to 0 since we did an integer division. Now what you tried to do is to convert 0 to a floating point using the function float(). Converting that resulted to 0.0

Division in python 2.7

3 Answers3