Mark Dickinson <dickinsm@gmail.com> added the comment: FTR, here "fixed point" refers to the output representation (a decimal string) rather than the input (a floating-point binary value). The output of %f gives a *fixed* number of places after the decimal point (6 by default). Contrast with %e, which gives a floating-point output representation. But yes, there are probably less confusing ways to word this. Did you have a particular alternative wording in mind? Here's the behaviour of %f for different scale values: note that the output always has the same number of digits after the point, but the number of significant digits varies.
"%f" % math.pi '3.141593' "%f" % (100.0 * math.pi) '314.159265' "%f" % (0.01 * math.pi) '0.031416'
And here's %e. Now it's the other way around: the number of significant digits stays the same, but the exponent changes to reflect the magnitude.
"%e" % math.pi '3.141593e+00' "%e" % (100 * math.pi) '3.141593e+02' "%e" % (0.01 * math.pi) '3.141593e-02'
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