How to have negative zero always formatted as positive zero in a python string?

Question

I have the following to format a string:

\'%.2f\' % n

If n is a negative zero (-0, -0.000 etc) the

Answer 1

The most straightforward way is to specialcase zero in your format:

>>> a = -0.0
>>> '%.2f' % ( a if a != 0 else abs(a) )
0.0

However, do note that the str.format method is preferred over % substitutions - the syntax in this case (and in most simple cases) is nearly identical:

>>> '{:.2f}'.format(a if a != 0 else abs(a))

Also note that the more concise a or abs(a) doesn't seem to - even though bool(a) is False.