How to display number with leading zeros in Python?

In Python 2 (and Python 3) you can do:

number = 1
print("%02d" % (number,))

Basically % is like printf or sprintf.

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For Python 3.+, the same behavior can also be achieved with format:

number = 1
print("{:02d}".format(number))

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Learn more about format and f-strings from this article on Python strings.

For Python 3.6+ the same behavior can be achieved with f-strings:

number = 1
print(f"{number:02d}")

How to display number with leading zeros in Python?

You can use str.zfill:

print(str(1).zfill(2))
print(str(10).zfill(2))
print(str(100).zfill(2))

prints:

01
10
100

Answer #3:

In Python 2.6+ and 3.0+, you would use the format() string method:

for i in (1, 10, 100):
    print('{num:02d}'.format(num=i))

or using the built-in (for a single number):

print(format(i, '02d'))

Answer #4:

print('{:02}'.format(1))
print('{:02}'.format(10))
print('{:02}'.format(100))

prints:

01
10
100

Answer #5:

In Python >= 3.6, you can do this succinctly with the new f-strings that were introduced by using:

f'{val:02}'

which prints the variable with name val with a fill value of 0 and a width of 2.

For your specific example you can do this nicely in a loop:

a, b, c = 1, 10, 100
for val in [a, b, c]:
    print(f'{val:02}')

which prints:

01 
10
100

Answer #6:

The Pythonic way to do this:

str(number).rjust(string_width, fill_char)

This way, the original string is returned unchanged if its length is greater than string_width. Example:

a = [1, 10, 100]
for num in a:
    print str(num).rjust(2, '0')

Results:

01
10
100

Answer #7:

This is how I do it:

str(1).zfill(len(str(total)))

Basically zfill takes the number of leading zeros you want to add, so it’s easy to take the biggest number, turn it into a string and get the length, like this:

Python 3.6.5 (default, May 11 2018, 04:00:52) 
[GCC 8.1.0] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> total = 100
>>> print(str(1).zfill(len(str(total))))
001
>>> total = 1000
>>> print(str(1).zfill(len(str(total))))
0001
>>> total = 10000
>>> print(str(1).zfill(len(str(total))))
00001
>>> 

Answer #8:

All of these create the string “01”:

>python -m timeit "'{:02d}'.format(1)"
1000000 loops, best of 5: 357 nsec per loop

>python -m timeit "'{0:0{1}d}'.format(1,2)"
500000 loops, best of 5: 607 nsec per loop

>python -m timeit "f'{1:02d}'"
1000000 loops, best of 5: 281 nsec per loop

>python -m timeit "f'{1:0{2}d}'"
500000 loops, best of 5: 423 nsec per loop

>python -m timeit "str(1).zfill(2)"
1000000 loops, best of 5: 271 nsec per loop

>python
Python 3.8.1 (tags/v3.8.1:1b293b6, Dec 18 2019, 23:11:46) [MSC v.1916 64 bit (AMD64)] on win32

Hope you learned something from this post.

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