From eba99dfde8b30e0671200b0dc52eccec91cf7cb3 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Raymond Hettinger Date: Sun, 5 Oct 2008 17:57:52 +0000 Subject: Issue 3412: Mention fractions and decimal in the tutorial section on floating point. --- Doc/tutorial/floatingpoint.rst | 8 ++++++++ 1 file changed, 8 insertions(+) diff --git a/Doc/tutorial/floatingpoint.rst b/Doc/tutorial/floatingpoint.rst index 8816acc..a38a53e 100644 --- a/Doc/tutorial/floatingpoint.rst +++ b/Doc/tutorial/floatingpoint.rst @@ -135,6 +135,14 @@ display of your final results to the number of decimal digits you expect. :func:`str` usually suffices, and for finer control see the :meth:`str.format` method's format specifiers in :ref:`formatstrings`. +For use cases which require exact decimal representation, try using the +:mod:`decimal` module which implements decimal arithmetic suitable for +accounting applications and high-precision applications. + +Another form of exact arithmetic is supported by the :mod:`fractions` module +which implements arithmetic based on rational numbers (so the numbers like +1/3 can be represented exactly). + If you are a heavy user of floating point operations you should take a look at the Numerical Python package and many other packages for mathematical and statistical operations supplied by the SciPy project. See . -- cgit v0.12