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2.5: Operators and Operands

  • Page ID
    8539
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    Operators are special symbols that represent computations like addition and multiplication. The values the operator is applied to are called operands.

    The operators +, -, *, /, and ** perform addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and exponentiation, as in the following examples:

    20+32   hour-1   hour*60+minute   minute/60   5**2   (5+9)*(15-7)

    There has been a change in the division operator between Python 2.x and Python 3.x. In Python 3.x, the result of this division is a floating point result:

    >>> minute = 59
    >>> minute/60
    0.9833333333333333

    The division operator in Python 2.0 would divide two integers and truncate the result to an integer:

    >>> minute = 59
    >>> minute/60
    0

    To obtain the same answer in Python 3.0 use floored ( // integer) division.

    >>> minute = 59
    >>> minute//60
    0

    In Python 3.0 integer division functions much more as you would expect if you entered the expression on a calculator.


    This page titled 2.5: Operators and Operands is shared under a CC BY-NC-SA license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Chuck Severance.

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