CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonfunctionif-statementsignbuilt-in
user2746752
user2746752

Reputation: 1088

Python assign sign of number to variable

I have a variable of type int, it's Python, so it can be positive and negative. Now, I want to make another variable have the same sign as the first variable1. It's easy to do this by using an if statement and then assign -1 or +1 to a variable and multiply every variable I want to have this sign by the -1 or +1. But then I thought maybe there is another way to do this (e.g. a built-in function). Is there something like "sign = getsignbit(value)"?

edit: Solved! math.copysign did the thing, cmp(x,0) works too, but I don't only want -1, 0 or 1, but also turn a 5 into -5.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1030

Answers (2)

John
John

Reputation: 16007

I don't think there is a built-in function, but you can roll your own easily enough:

def the_sign(num):
    return cmp(num, 0)

Upvotes: 3

Peter DeGlopper
Peter DeGlopper

Reputation: 37344

There's no built in sign function (see this answer for some explanation: Why doesn't Python have a sign function? ), but math.copysign might be useful to you. http://docs.python.org/2/library/math.html#math.copysign

Upvotes: 3

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