How to convert a string to a number if it has commas in it as thousands separators?

Question

I have a string that represents a number which uses commas to separate thousands. How can I convert this to a number in python?

>>> int(\"1,000,000         


        

Answer 1

I got locale error from accepted answer, but the following change works here in Finland (Windows XP):

import locale
locale.setlocale( locale.LC_ALL, 'english_USA' )
print locale.atoi('1,000,000')
# 1000000
print locale.atof('1,000,000.53')
# 1000000.53

Answer 2

>>> import locale
>>> locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, "")
'en_US.UTF-8'
>>> print locale.atoi('1,000,000')
1000000
>>> print locale.atof('1,000,000.53')
1000000.53

this is done on Linux in US.

Answer 3

I tried this. It goes a bit beyond the question: You get an input. It will be converted to string first (if it is a list, for example from Beautiful soup); then to int, then to float.

It goes as far as it can get. In worst case, it returns everything unconverted as string.

def to_normal(soupCell):
''' converts a html cell from beautiful soup to text, then to int, then to float: as far as it gets.
US thousands separators are taken into account.
needs import locale'''

locale.setlocale( locale.LC_ALL, 'english_USA' ) 

output = unicode(soupCell.findAll(text=True)[0].string)
try: 
    return locale.atoi(output)
except ValueError: 
    try: return locale.atof(output)
    except ValueError:
        return output

Answer 4

Replace the commas with empty strings, and turn the resulting string into an int or a float.

>>> a = '1,000,000'
>>> int(a.replace(',' , ''))
1000000
>>> float(a.replace(',' , ''))
1000000.0

Answer 5

This works:

(A dirty but quick way)

>>> a='-1,234,567,89.0123'
>>> "".join(a.split(","))
'-123456789.0123'

Answer 6

import locale
locale.setlocale( locale.LC_ALL, 'en_US.UTF-8' ) 
locale.atoi('1,000,000')
# 1000000
locale.atof('1,000,000.53')
# 1000000.53