Question

Python is exhibiting a strange behaviour that I didnt witness before, not sure what I did or what happened but basically it doesnt operate in shell with decimals
if i type simple

>>> 2/3
0
>>> 3/2
1

if i try to format that through % or format() it doesnt do much either, basically it just doesnt recognize any decimal

>>> a =2/3
>>> a
0
>>> format(a, '.5f')
'0.00000'

I needed a simple division for my code to check something and all of a sudden I encountered something as bizzare as this

I use Python 2.7

Answer 1

In Python 2, / performs “integer division” by default. If you put

from __future__ import division

at the top of your script, it will do the division you want, which will be the default behavior in Python 3. Alternatively, if you want to stay compatible with old Python versions (not recommended for new code), do

2. / 3.

or, with variables

x / float(y)