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.

Answer 2

A very closely related problem is that -0.00001 is also formatted as "-0.00". That can be just as confusing. The answers above will not take care of this (except for user278064's, which needs an anchored regexp).

It's ugly, but this is the best I can do for this case:

import re
re.sub (r"^-(0\.?0*)$", r"\1", "%.2f" % number)

Answer 3

>>> x= '{0:.2f}'.format(abs(n) if n==0 else n)
>>> print(x) 
0.00

reason for the if condition:

>>> -0.0000==0
True
>>> 0.000==0
True
>>> 0.0==0
True

Answer 4

import re
re.sub("[-+](0\.0+)", r"\1", number)

e.g.:

re.sub("[-+](0\.0+)", r"\1", "-0.0000") // "0.0000"
re.sub("[-+](0\.0+)", r"\1", "+0.0000") // "0.0000"    

Answer 5

Add zero:

>>> a = -0.0
>>> a + 0
0.0

which you can format:

>>> '{0:.3f}'.format(a + 0)
'0.000'