Question

Please can anyone tell me how to get the following output in python:

9.4605e+12

I typed it that way

S_L = "2.998765e+08" 
print "S_L"

But it did not work

Answer 1

You can get print a number with exponent notation by using string formatting:

>>> my_num = 123456.7890
>>> print my_num
123456.789
>>> print '{0:e}'.format(my_num)
1.234568e+05

And in your case above, you are probably getting S_L as the output because you have quotes around S_L, which means it is getting interpreted as a string and not the contents of the S_L variable. In that specific case, you could do:

>>> S_L = "2.998765e+08"
>>> print S_L
2.998765e+08