NB: this question is about significant figures. It is not a question about "digits after the decimal point" or anything like that.
EDIT: This question is not a duplicate of Significant figures in the decimal module. The two questions are asking about entirely different problems. I want to know why the function about does not return the desired value for a specific input. None of the answers to Significant figures in the decimal module address this question.
The following function is supposed to return a string representation of a float with the specified number of significant figures:
import decimal
def to_sigfigs(value, sigfigs):
return str(decimal.Context(prec=sigfigs).create_decimal(value))
At first glance, it seems to work:
print to_sigfigs(0.000003141592653589793, 5)
# 0.0000031416
print to_sigfigs(0.000001, 5)
# 0.0000010000
print to_sigfigs(3.141592653589793, 5)
# 3.1416
...but
print to_sigfigs(1.0, 5)
# 1
The desired output for the last expression (IOW, the 5-significant figure representation of 1.0) is the string '1.0000'. The actual output is the string '1'.
Am I misunderstanding something or is this a bug in decimal?
解决方案
Is it a bug? I don't know, I don't think the documentation is tight enough to make that determination. It certainly is a surprising result.
It is possible to fix your own function with a little more logic.
def to_sigfigs(value, sigfigs):
sign, digits, exponent = decimal.Context(prec=sigfigs).create_decimal(value).as_tuple()
if len(digits) < sigfigs:
missing = sigfigs - len(digits)
digits = digits + (0,) * missing
exponent -= missing
return str(decimal.Decimal((sign, digits, exponent)))