iterating in reverse

[Paul Rubin]

Nick Vargish <nav at adams.patriot.net> writes:
> I'm summing the number of bytes used in a file repository (I wish I
> could just use "du", but alas...), so negative numbers are not a
> factor. But I like the generator approach, very tricky.

How about something like (untested):

    def convert(nbytes):
       suffixes = ['K', 'M', 'G', 'T', 'P', 'E']
       s = ''
       while nbytes >= 1024:
          nbytes /= 1024.0
          s = suffixes.pop(0)

       return '%.3f%c'% (nbytes, s)