How to print float to n decimal places including trailing 0s?

The cleanest way in modern Python >=3.6, is to use an f-string with string formatting:

>>> var = 1.6
>>> f"{var:.15f}"
'1.600000000000000'

Floating point numbers lack precision to accurately represent "1.6" out to that many decimal places. The rounding errors are real. Your number is not actually 1.6.

Check out: http://docs.python.org/library/decimal.html


For Python versions in 2.6+ and 3.x

You can use the str.format method. Examples:

>>> print('{0:.16f}'.format(1.6))
1.6000000000000001

>>> print('{0:.15f}'.format(1.6))
1.600000000000000

Note the 1 at the end of the first example is rounding error; it happens because exact representation of the decimal number 1.6 requires an infinite number binary digits. Since floating-point numbers have a finite number of bits, the number is rounded to a nearby, but not equal, value.

For Python versions prior to 2.6 (at least back to 2.0)

You can use the "modulo-formatting" syntax (this works for Python 2.6 and 2.7 too):

>>> print '%.16f' % 1.6
1.6000000000000001

>>> print '%.15f' % 1.6
1.600000000000000