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pythondjangostringquantization

What's the difference between quantize() and str.format()?

I don't mean what's the technical difference, but rather, what's the faster/more logical or Pythonic, etc. way to do this:

    def __quantized_price(self):
        TWOPLACES = Decimal(10) ** -2
        return self.price.quantize(TWOPLACES)

or

    def __formatted_price(self):
        TWOPLACES = Decimal(10) ** -2
        return '{0:.2f}'.format(self.price)

They seem to be exactly the same so I'm just wondering why they created quantize when

Solution

  • Decimal.quantize returns a new Decimal that has a different value.

    ''.format() formats a string.

    In this particular case printing the result yields the same output. Other than that they are totally different operations returning totally different types.