how can I force division to be floating point in Python?

Question

I have two integer values a and b, but I need their ratio in floating point. I know that a<b and I want to calculate a/b, so if I use integer division I'll always get 0 with a remainder of a.

How can I force c to be a floating point number in Python when:

c = a / b

Answer 1

c = a / (b * 1.0)

Answer 2

You can cast to float by doing c = a / float(b). If the numerator or denominator is a float, then the result will be also.

Answer 3

>>> from __future__ import division
>>> a = 4
>>> b = 6
>>> c = a / b
>>> c
0.66666666666666663

Answer 4

In Python 3.x, the single slash (/) always means true (non-truncating) division. (The // operator is used for truncating division.) In Python 2.x (2.2 and above), you can get this same behavior by putting a

from __future__ import division

at the top of your module.

Answer 5

Just making any of the parameters for division in floating-point format also produces the output in floating-point.

Example:

>>> 4.0/3
1.3333333333333333

or,

>>> 4 / 3.0
1.3333333333333333