String manipulations

[Philippe C. Martin]

Multiply them by 10000 ?

Lorn wrote:

> I'm trying to work on a dataset that has it's primary numbers saved as
> floats in string format. I'd like to work with them as integers with an
> implied decimal to the hundredth. The problem is that the current
> precision is variable. For instance, some numbers have 4 decimal places
> while others have 2, etc. (10.7435 vs 1074.35)... all numbers are of
> fixed length.
> 
> I have some ideas of how to do this, but I'm wondering if there's a
> better way. My current way is to brute force search where the decimal
> is by slicing and then cutoff the extraneous numbers, however, it would
> be nice to stay away from a bunch of if then's.
> 
> Does anyone have any ideas on how to do this more efficiently?
> 
> Many Thanks,
> Lorn