What is the range of values a float can have in Python?

Question

What are its smallest and biggest values in python?

Answer 1

Just playing around; here is an algorithmic method to find the minimum and maximum positive float, hopefully in any python implementation where float("+inf") is acceptable:

def find_float_limits():
    """Return a tuple of min, max positive numbers
    representable by the platform's float"""

    # first, make sure a float's a float
    if 1.0/10*10 == 10.0:
        raise RuntimeError("Your platform's floats aren't")

    minimum= maximum= 1.0
    infinity= float("+inf")

    # first find minimum
    last_minimum= 2*minimum
    while last_minimum > minimum > 0:
        last_minimum= minimum
        minimum*= 0.5

    # now find maximum
    operands= []
    while maximum < infinity:
        operands.append(maximum)
        try:
            maximum*= 2
        except OverflowError:
            break
    last_maximum= maximum= 0
    while operands and maximum < infinity:
        last_maximum= maximum
        maximum+= operands.pop()

    return last_minimum, last_maximum

if __name__ == "__main__":
    print (find_float_limits()) # python 2 and 3 friendly

In my case,

$ python so1835787.py
(4.9406564584124654e-324, 1.7976931348623157e+308)

so denormals are used.