Print extremely large long in scientific notation in python

Question

Is there a way to get python to print extremely large longs in scientific notation? I am talking about numbers on the order of 10^1000 or larger, at this size the standard print

Answer 1

No need to use a third party library. Here's a solution in Python3, that works for large integers.

def ilog(n, base):
    """
    Find the integer log of n with respect to the base.

    >>> import math
    >>> for base in range(2, 16 + 1):
    ...     for n in range(1, 1000):
    ...         assert ilog(n, base) == int(math.log(n, base) + 1e-10), '%s %s' % (n, base)
    """
    count = 0
    while n >= base:
        count += 1
        n //= base
    return count

def sci_notation(n, prec=3):
    """
    Represent n in scientific notation, with the specified precision.

    >>> sci_notation(1234 * 10**1000)
    '1.234e+1003'
    >>> sci_notation(10**1000 // 2, prec=1)
    '5.0e+999'
    """
    base = 10
    exponent = ilog(n, base)
    mantissa = n / base**exponent
    return '{0:.{1}f}e{2:+d}'.format(mantissa, prec, exponent)