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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-30T04:47:55+00:00

While I was messing around with Python, >>> [attr for attr in dir(1) if

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While I was messing around with Python, 

>>> [attr for attr in dir(1) if not attr.startswith('_')]
['bit_length', 'conjugate', 'denominator', 'imag', 'numerator', 'real']
>>> [attr for attr in dir(1.1) if not attr.startswith('_')]
['as_integer_ratio', 'conjugate', 'fromhex', 'hex', 'imag', 'is_integer', 'real']

Although I understand that ‘conjugate’, ‘imag’, and ‘real’ are there for the sake of compatibility with complex type, I can’t understand why ‘numerator’ and ‘denominator’ exists for int only, and doesn’t for a float.

Any explanation for that ?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    This is most likely because floats are somewhat lossy – they can not perfectly represent every value. Consider this example:

    >>> 1.0/5.0
0.20000000000000001

    If you wanted the access the denominator of 1.0/5.0 python would have to return 18014398509481984 (20000000000000001/100000000000000000 == 3602879701896397/18014398509481984). The loss of precision will cause python to have no choice but to return crazy values, so the designers chose not to implement the function.

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