On Jan 13, 3:15 pm, Odysseus <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: [snip] > > P.S. Is there a preferable technique for forcing floating-point division > of two integers to that used above, multiplying by "100.0" first? What > about if I just wanted a ratio: is "float(n / m)" better than "1.0 * n / > m"?
> Odysseus You obviously haven't tried float(n / m), or you wouldn't be asking. Go ahead and try it. "Preferable" depends on whether you want legibility or speed. Most legible and slowest first: 1. float(n) / float(m) 2. n / float(m) 3. 1.0 * n / m # Rationale so far: function calls are slow 4. If you have a lot of this to do, and you really care about the speed and m (the denominator) is constant throughout, do fm = float(m) once, and then in your loop do n / fm for each n -- and make sure you run properly constructed benchmarks ... Recommendation: go with (2) until you find you've got a program with a real speed problem (and then it probably won't be caused by this choice). HTH, John -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
