Number Format function

[Edward Hartfield]

I'm am relatively new to Python but use it daily.  Today, I went looking 
for a function, like PHP's number_function, that will take a number and 
return a string with number formatted with grouped thousands and the 
decimal portion rounded to a given number of places.  This is certainly 
needed when you want to take a floating-point value from a database and 
display it as currency, for instance.  I could not find what I was 
looking for so I wrote the following function.  I hope either (a) I've 
provided something useful or (b) someone can tell me what I *should* 
have done!  Thanks.

import math

def number_format(num, places=0):
    """Format a number with grouped thousands and given decimal places"""

    #is_negative = (num < 0)
    #if is_negative:
    #    num = -num

    places = max(0,places)
    tmp = "%.*f" % (places, num)
    point = tmp.find(".")
    integer = (point == -1) and tmp or tmp[:point]
    decimal = (point != -1) and tmp[point:] or ""

    count = commas = 0
    formatted = []
    for i in range(len(integer) - 1, 0, -1):
        count += 1
        formatted.append(integer[i])
        if count % 3 == 0:
            formatted.append(",")

    integer = "".join(formatted[::-1])
    return integer+decimal
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