Working with decimals

[Chris Angelico]

On Sun, Aug 24, 2014 at 8:47 AM, Joshua Landau <joshua at landau.ws> wrote:
> On 23 August 2014 23:31, Chris Angelico <rosuav at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Sun, Aug 24, 2014 at 7:47 AM, Joshua Landau <joshua at landau.ws> wrote:
>>> So for one "import math" should never go inside a function; you should
>>> hoist it to the top of the file with all the other imports.
>>
>> I'd say "never" is too strong (there are times when it's right to put
>> an import inside a function), but yes, in this case it should really
>> be at the top of the function.
>
> But do any of them apply to "import math"?

Yep. If you have only one function that will ever use it, and that
function often won't ever be called, then putting the import inside
the function speeds up startup. Anything that cuts down on I/O can
give a dramatic performance improvement.

Oh, and when I said "top of the function", what I really meant was
"top of the file", but I think (hope!) people figured that out. Sorry
for the braino.

>> However, you won't need the import at all if you let the formatting
>> function do the rounding for you.
>
> Can that floor?

I'm not sure, dig into the format spec and see! But was flooring
actually a critical part of the problem, or is another sort of
rounding just as good?

ChrisA