Limiting floats to two decimal points

Question

I want a to be rounded to 13.95.

>>> a
13.949999999999999
>>> round(a, 2)
13.949999999999999

The round function does not work the way I expected.

Answer 1

from decimal import Decimal


def round_float(v, ndigits=2, rt_str=False):
    d = Decimal(v)
    v_str = ("{0:.%sf}" % ndigits).format(round(d, ndigits))
    if rt_str:
        return v_str
    return Decimal(v_str)

Results:

Python 3.6.1 (default, Dec 11 2018, 17:41:10)
>>> round_float(3.1415926)
Decimal('3.14')
>>> round_float(3.1445926)
Decimal('3.14')
>>> round_float(3.1455926)
Decimal('3.15')
>>> round_float(3.1455926, rt_str=True)
'3.15'
>>> str(round_float(3.1455926))
'3.15'

Answer 2

There are new format specifications, String Format Specification Mini-Language:

You can do the same as:

"{0:.2f}".format(13.949999999999999)

Note that the above returns a string. In order to get as float, simply wrap with float(...):

float("{0:.2f}".format(13.949999999999999))

Note that wrapping with float() doesn't change anything:

>>> x = 13.949999999999999999
>>> x
13.95
>>> g = float("{0:.2f}".format(x))
>>> g
13.95
>>> x == g
True
>>> h = round(x, 2)
>>> h
13.95
>>> x == h
True

Answer 3

Use

print"{:.2f}".format(a)

instead of

print"{0:.2f}".format(a)

Because the latter may lead to output errors when trying to output multiple variables (see comments).

Answer 4

TLDR ;)

The rounding problem at input / output has been solved by Python 2.7.0 and 3.1 definitively.

Infinite test:

import random
for x in iter(random.random, None):           # Verify FOREVER that rounding is fixed :-)
    assert float(repr(x)) == x                # Reversible repr() conversion.
    assert len(repr(round(x, 10))) <= 12      # Smart decimal places in repr() after round.
    if x >= 0.1:                              # Implicit rounding to 12 significant digits
        assert str(x) == repr(round(x, 12))   # by str() is good enough for small errors.
        y = 1000 * x                             # Decimal type is excessive for shopping
        assert str(y) == repr(round(y, 12 - 3))  # in the supermaket with Python 2.7+ :-)

Documentation

See the Release notes Python 2.7 - Other Language Changes the fourth paragraph:

Conversions between floating-point numbers and strings are now correctly rounded on most platforms. These conversions occur in many different places: str() on floats and complex numbers; the float and complex constructors; numeric formatting; serializing and de-serializing floats and complex numbers using the marshal, pickle and json modules; parsing of float and imaginary literals in Python code; and Decimal-to-float conversion.

Related to this, the repr() of a floating-point number x now returns a result based on the shortest decimal string that’s guaranteed to round back to x under correct rounding (with round-half-to-even rounding mode). Previously it gave a string based on rounding x to 17 decimal digits.

The related issue

---

More information:: The formatting of float before Python 2.7 was similar to the current numpy.float64. Both types use the same 64 bit IEEE 754 double precision with 52 bit mantissa. A big difference is that np.float64.__repr__ is formatted frequently with an excessive decimal number so that no bit can be lost, but no valid IEEE 754 number exists between 13.949999999999999 and 13.950000000000001. The result is not nice and the conversion repr(float(number_as_string)) is not reversible. On the other hand: float.__repr__ is formatted so that every digit is important; the sequence is without gaps and the conversion is reversible. Simply: If you perhaps have a numpy.float64 number, convert it to normal float in order to be formatted for humans, not for numeric processors, otherwise nothing more is necessary with Python 2.7+.

Answer 5

To round a number to a resolution, the best way is the following one, which can work with any resolution (0.01 for two decimals or even other steps):

>>> import numpy as np
>>> value = 13.949999999999999
>>> resolution = 0.01
>>> newValue = int(np.round(value/resolution))*resolution
>>> print newValue
13.95

>>> resolution = 0.5
>>> newValue = int(np.round(value/resolution))*resolution
>>> print newValue
14.0

Answer 6

In Python 2.7:

a = 13.949999999999999
output = float("%0.2f"%a)
print output