4.6. Numbers

Because you’re probably familiar with standard numeric operations from other languages, this book doesn’t contain a separate chapter describing Python’s numeric abilities. This section describes the unique features of Python numbers, and the Python documentation lists the available functions.

Python offers four kinds of numbers: integers, floats, complex numbers, and Booleans. An integer constant is written as an integer—0, –11, +33, 123456—and has unlimited range, restricted only by the resources of your machine. A float can be written with a decimal point or using scientific notation: 3.14, –2E-8, 2.718281828. The precision of these values is governed by the underlying machine but is typically equal to double (64-bit) types in C. Complex numbers are probably of limited interest and are discussed separately later in the section. Booleans are either True or False and behave identically to 1 and 0 except for their string representations.