Whether you are just starting in programming or a seasoned developer, typecasting is a common task, and you will need a way to convert a float into a string representation.
Requirements
To follow along with this post, all you need is:
- Python 3 interpreter.
- A code editor or a terminal access.
This tutorial will demonstrate the functionality using Python 3.11, but they should work for all Python 3 versions.
Method 1 - Using str Function
Using the str function is the most simplistic and Pythonic way of converting a float to a string. An example is as shown:
>>> f = 3.14159
>>> s = str(f)
>>> print(s)
3.14159
>>> print(type(s))
<class 'str'>
As you can see, the code above quickly converts the float to a string by calling the str function.
We can use the string formatting functionality in Python 3 to set the decimal after the comma. An example is as shown below:
>>> f = 3.14159
>>> s = f'{f:.2f}'
>>> print(s)
3.14
This tells the Python interpreter to set two decimal values after the comma.
Method 2 - Using the Format Method.
We can also use the format() method to convert a given float value to its string representation, as shown in the example below:
>>> f = 3.14159
>>> s = '{}'.format(f)
>>> print(s)
3.14159
>>> print(type(s))
<class 'str'>
As you can see, this should return the string representation of the float value.
We can also specify the precision after the comma when converting a float to a string, as shown in the example below:
>>> f = 3.14159
>>> s = '{:.2f}'.format(f)
>>> print(s)
3.14
In this case, we tell Python only to include two values after the comma using the :.2f format.
End.
In this post, we covered the methods to convert a float into a string representation using Python's built-in tools and methods.
