"Sara Johnson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote > I always thought with floats you needed a 0.0. > I do have some percentages that are less than 1% but more than 0.0.
If you already have a float value then you can compare it to an int and save the typing. zero means the same in a float comparison as 0.0 If you were trying to do float arithmetic, especially division, you need to exress at least one of the values as a float. The code you originally posted did that by just having a decimal point at the end - which is terrible style - but its more conventional (ie. more readable) to add .0 But >fracmiss = 1.0 * numberMissing( z[key].values() ) / nsites In this case mutiplying by 1.0 seems to be a clumsy way to ensure a float result when >fracmiss = float(numberMissing( z[key].values() )) / nsites would achieve the same and be more explicit as to purpose. Alan G _______________________________________________ Tutor maillist - Tutor@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor