CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythoninteger
user_user
user_user

Reputation: 21

Always int divide int = float in Python

My problem is when I divide a number like: 10 / 2 → integer / integer.

The result is 5.0 and it is float, but it shouldn't be float. The problem is Python adds 0.0 to every number accept to divide with the second number.

So I want 10/2 be integer.

I tried

x = 10
y = x/2
type(y) == int

It prints false. I want type(y) print the true result although x was a prime or odd number.

Upvotes: 2

Views: 7384

Answers (1)

Paul Boddington
Paul Boddington

Reputation: 37645

/ gives a floating point result. If you want an integer result, use //.

The reason it works like this is that if you have something like

function1() / function2()

it is possible to tell the type of the result even if you don't know the types returned by the individual functions.

Edit 1

Note that it has not always been this way. This is a "new" Python 3 behaviour, also available (but not active by default) for Python 2.2 onwards - see PEP 238. Thanks to @Steve314 for pointing this out.

Edit 2

However, it seems that what you are really trying to do is tell if one number goes exactly into another. For this you should use % (remainder)

print(15 % 5 == 0) 
print(16 % 3 == 0)

This prints 

True
False

Edit 3

If you want the type of the result to depend on whether the division goes exactly, you would need to do

a // b if a % b == 0 else a / b

Upvotes: 5

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