How to print floating point numbers as it is without any truncation in python?

Question

I have some number 0.0000002345E^-60. I want to print the floating point value as it is. What is the way to do it? print %f truncates it to 6 digits. Also %n.nf gives fixed

Answer 1

You can use decimal.Decimal:

>>> from decimal import Decimal
>>> str(Decimal(0.0000002345e-60))
'2.344999999999999860343602938602754401109865640550232148836753621775217856801120686600683401464097113374472942165409862789978024748827516129306833728589548440037314681709534891496105046826414763927459716796875E-67'

This is the actual value of float created by literal 0.0000002345e-60. Its value is a number representable as python float which is closest to actual 0.0000002345 * 10**-60.

float should be generally used for approximate calculations. If you want accurate results you should use something else, like mentioned Decimal.