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The difference between two functions
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The difference between two functions
#1
I am a newbie to python and going through the NLTK book to learn a bit about using python for natural language processing. This post is not about NLTK, but about the difference in object classes that occur in the following two functions:

The first function is used to find the percentage of times that a single word occurs within the body of a text:

def percent1(text, word):
    a = text.count(word) #counts the number of 'words' (items) in the list (i.e. text)
    b = len(text)
    perc = a / b 
    print(f"{perc} %")
    #an example of the output of this function is: 7.2385e-05%
The second function does the same thing, except it returns the output as a decimal:

def percent2(text, word):
    from decimal import Decimal
    a = text.count(word)
    b = len(text)
    perc = Decimal(a / b)
    output = round(perc, 8) #rounds the variable perc to the 8th decimal place
    print(f"{output} %")
    #an example of the output of this function 
    #(from the same text) is: 0.00007285%
In trying to understand the difference between floats and integers, my question is this: Does the first function return a float (floating point integer?) while the second function returns a decimal integer? Would stating it that way be correct? (My apologies, I'm brushing up on math while coding, but I am not the most adept with such terminology) All thoughts and considerations are appreciated.
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Messages In This Thread
The difference between two functions - by Motley_Cow - Dec-03-2019, 12:11 AM

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