3 Python ways to Limit float up to two decimal places
Since Data types and variable types are a very important part of any programming language, it is important to know about their popular use cases.
In this article we will discuss about the a very popular use case of the floating-point numbers i.e., Limiting the float up to two decimal places.
Overview of floating-point numbers in Python
Python has a variety of Data Types which are used to specify the category of the value that can be stored inside a variable.
Out of these numerous data types, float is a data type that hold both decimals and integers.
Unless and until value assigned to a variable isn’t in the form of decimals, Python interprets it as an integer.
Examples of floating-point numbers in Python:
a= 13.5
b= 25.758
print(a,' & ',b)
Output:
13.5 & 25.758
Limiting float up to 2 decimal places in Python
Now let’s dive deep into detail of the methods
Method 1: Using the round() function
We can use Python’s inbuilt round() function to round off our numbers which are passed into the constructor as a parameter.
This function rounds of the passed-on number to a given number of digits.
b= 25.758
print(round(b))
Output:
26
Actually , the round() function takes in two arguments, first one is the number to be rounded and the second is the number of places to be rounded off to.
But if no second argument is passed then the function considers it to be zero and rounds of the floating-point number to the nearest integer following the mathematical rules and algorithms.
By this, it should have been pretty clear on how to use this function to limit a float up to two decimals.
b= 25.7587852
c=19.568231469
print(round(b,2))
print(round(c,2))
Output:
25.76
19.57
Pretty simple and a go-to method in order to constraint our floats up to two decimal places.
Method 2: Using the % operator
If you come from a C language background, then you must be very familiar with using the % operator in print statements.
But we can also use this % operator in Python print statements in order to restrict our floats up to two decimal places.
b= 25.7587852
c=19.568231469
print("%.2f"%b)
print("%.2f"%c)
Output:
25.76
19.57
Method 3: Using the str.format() method
format() is a very useful method while programming in python and thus, it also has its usage in limiting floats up to decimals.
Here str.format() refers to a method of using ***"{:.2f}"*** as the str in the above format.
The string along with the format() method will restrict the floating-point numbers up to 2 decimal places.
Let’s test this:
b= 25.7587852
c=19.568231469
print("{:.2f}".format(b))
print("{:.2f}".format(c))
Output:
25.76
19.57
Conclusion
In this article, we briefly discussed about the few different methods about how to limit floating-point numbers up to two decimal points.
First, we started with python’s inbuilt round() method followed by the % operator and lastly about using the str.format() method.
Again, I would state that all the three methods are self sufficient of providing user desirable output individually and we can use any one of them while programming.
I am Dibyanshu Mohanty, Undergraduate Engineering Student at VIT, Vellore with a keen interest in Web and App Development