Print floating point values without leading zero

Question

Trying to use a format specifier to print a float that will be less than 1 without the leading zero. I came up with a bit of a hack but I assume there is a way to just drop

Answer 1

import re
re.sub("^(\-?)0\.", r'\1.', "%.4f" % k)

This is short, simple and I can't find a scenario for which it doesn't work.

Examples:

>>> import re
>>> re.sub("^(\-?)0\.", r'\1.', "%.4f" % 0)
'.0000'
>>> re.sub("^(\-?)0\.", r'\1.', "%.4f" % 0.1337)
'.1337'
>>> re.sub("^(\-?)0\.", r'\1.', "%.4f" % 1.337)
'1.3370'
>>> re.sub("^(\-?)0\.", r'\1.', "%.4f" % -0)
'.0000'
>>> re.sub("^(\-?)0\.", r'\1.', "%.4f" % -0.1337)
'-.1337'
>>> re.sub("^(\-?)0\.", r'\1.', "%.4f" % -1.337)
'-1.3370'
>>> re.sub("^(\-?)0\.", r'\1.', "%.4f" % 10.337)
'10.3370'
>>> re.sub("^(\-?)0\.", r'\1.', "%.4f" % -10.337)
'-10.3370'

Edit: If you are only considering numbers > -10 and < 10 The following will work:

("%.4f", k).replace('0.', '.')