On Apr 8, 9:13 am, "Hutch" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > We now have a float result when two integers are divided in the same mannor > as 2.4 or 2.5. > I can handle that and use the Floor division but a simple question. > > Why in the world would you round down the last presented digit to a 6 > instead of just leaving it along as an 8. > For some reason rounding down for a float in Python does not seem correct. > > IDLE 3.0a4 > > >>> 12345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890/345 > > 3.5784576525317586e+46 > > >>> 12345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890//345 > > 35784576525317588087314367504383610663481839327 > ^ > ^| > 35784576525317586000000000000000000000000000000 == 3.5784576525317586e+46
Floats are weird that way. Part of the problem is you are representing a decimal number (base 10) in binary (base 2). The other part is that you can't increment floats by a very tiny amount. In other words, a + b = a for floats when b is sufficiently small but not zero. Blame floats, not Python. If you want precision with fractions, you should be using the Decimal type, which uses a rational. A rational, if you recall from your math classes, is one integer divided by another. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
