python: how to convert currency to decimal?

Question

i have dollars in a string variable

dollars = '$5.99'

how do i convert this to a decimal instead of a string so that i can do operations with it like adding dollars to it?

Answer 1

If you'd prefer just an integer number of cents:

cents_int = int(round(float(dollars.strip('$'))*100))

If you want a Decimal, just use...

from decimal import Decimal
dollars_dec = Decimal(dollars.strip('$'))

If you know that the dollar sign will always be there, you could use dollars[1:] instead of dollars.strip('$'), but using strip() lets you also handle strings that omit the dollar sign (5.99 instead of $5.99).