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Casting

Casting involves changing the data type of a variable, allowing you to perform operations that might not be possible in its original type. Python provides several built-in functions and methods to facilitate this conversion.

Basic Data Type Casting​

String to Integer​

string_num = "42"
int_num = int(string_num)
print("Integer:", int_num)

Integer to String​

integer = 123
str_integer = str(integer)
print("String:", str_integer)

String to Float​

string_float = "3.14"
float_num = float(string_float)
print("Float:", float_num)

Float to Integer​

float_num = 7.8
int_from_float = int(float_num)
print("Integer from Float:", int_from_float)

Handling Exceptions​

Casting between certain data types may lead to errors, especially when converting to or from incompatible types. For example, converting a non-numeric string to an integer will raise a ValueError.

In a later article, we'll provide a more indepth explanation of exception handling.

To handle these situations, use try-except blocks:

string_num = "hello"
try:
    int_num = int(string_num)
    print("Integer:", int_num)
except ValueError:
    print("Conversion failed.")