Casting in Python

With casting, you can convert a variable from one type to another.

If we use this code, Python automatically decides x and y to be integer, based on assigned values:

x = 20
y = 5

However, if x and y were strings, then we will need to convert them to integers to perform arithmetic operations. In the following code, x = “20” and y = “5” are defined as strings. The code then uses the int() function to cast these strings to integers.

x = "20"
y = "5"
x = int(x)
y = int(y)
total = x + y
print(total)

The output will be:

If we didn’t cast them into integers, then instead of arithmetic operation, the strings will be concatenated. For example, this code isn’t casting x and y into integers:

x = "20"
y = "5"
total = x + y
print(total)

The output will be:

Now that we’ve understood the concept of casting, let’s see how to convert different data types in Python.

In this code, the float value of 3.9 is converted to integer:

x = int (3.9)
print(x)

The output will be:

In this code, the integer value of 7 is converted to float:

x = float (7)
print(x)

The output will be:

In this code, the integer value of 21 is converted to string and concatenated with another string:

x = 21
x = str(x)
print ("Oranges purchased " + x)

The output will be:

You’ve learned the concept of casting, with examples like string to integer and integer to float. Thanks for going through this blog post!