python - Print floating point values without leading zero

Question

Trying to use a format specifier to print a float that will be less than 1 without the leading zero. I came up with a bit of a hack but I assume there is a way to just drop the leading zero in the format specifier. I couldn't find it in the docs.

Issue

>>> k = .1337
>>> print "%.4f" % k
'0.1337'

Hack

>>> print ("%.4f" % k) [1:]
'.1337'

Answer 1

Here is another way:

>>> ("%.4f" % k).lstrip('0')
'.1337'

It is slightly more general than [1:] in that it also works with numbers >=1.

Neither method correctly handles negative numbers, however. The following is better in this respect:

>>> re.sub('0(?=[.])', '', ("%0.4f" % -k))
'-.1337'

Not particularly elegant, but right now I can't think of a better method.