How do I print out the number contained in a float object in Python to a certain number of decimal places?   How do I format a time so that if I have an hour of 7 and a minute of 9 it comes out as 07:09?

In Python, the % operator is overloaded - it gives "remainder when divided by" if the parameter to the left of the % character is a numeric object type, and it gives "formatted to" if the parameter to the left of the % character is a string.

In other words, the % operator in python is like the sprintf function in Perl, PHP and C.

Sample program:
Code:

#!/usr/bin/python vatrate = 17.5 amount = float(raw_input("Please enter an amount paid: ")) hour = int(raw_input("What was the hour? ")) min = int(raw_input("What was the minute? ")) result = "The amount %.2f was paid at %02d:%02d" % (amount, hour, min) tax = amount * vatrate / (100.0 + vatrate) taxinfo = "That's %.2f plus %.2f tax" % (amount -tax, tax) print result print taxinfo

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