> However, I can't seem to get the program to treat the numbers as > numbers. If I put them in the dictionary as 'THE' = int(0.965) the > program returns 1.0
It certainoly does _not_ return 1.0 - it returns 1. And that is all it can return for being an integer that has by definition no fractional part. > and if I put 'THE' = float(0.965) it returns > 0.96555555549 or something similar. Neither of these are right! I > basically need to access each item in the string as a number, because > for my last function I want to multiply them all together by each > other. It _is_ the right number if you use floats - you just have to take into account that 10-based fractions can't always be represented properly by 2-based IEEE floating points, resulting in rounding errors. Which is what you see. http://wiki.python.org/moin/RepresentationError?highlight=%28float%29 Either you don't care about the minor differences, the use float. Or you do, then use the decimal-class introduced in python 2.4 Diez -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list