Python Programming for Biology: Bioinformatics and Beyond

Converting between types

If you have some useful data in one type of data structure but need it to be in another, it

can  be  a  very  quick  operation  to  do  the  transfer.  Indeed,  many  of  the  common

transformations between the standard types of data are built into the language. Thus, for

example,  with  single  commands  you  can  convert  a  floating  point  number  to  an  integer,

which  ignores  everything  after  the  decimal  point,  or  convert  an  unalterable  tuple  to  a

changeable  list  containing  the  same  elements,  or  make  a  number  from  a  text  string  that

contains digits.

---

text = ' +0.783 '

floatNumber = float(text)

wholeNumber = int(floatNumber)

dnaTuple = ('A', 'C', 'G', 'T')

dnaList = list(dnaTuple)

Some data type conversions in Python.