class float(x=0.0)

Return a floating point number constructed from a number or string x.

REMARKS

* No prefix required - Core
* If the argument is a string, it should contain a decimal number, optionally preceded by a sign, and optionally embedded in whitespace. The optional sign may be '+' or '-'; a '+' sign has no effect on the value produced. The argument may also be a string representing a NaN (not-a-number), or positive or negative infinity. More precisely, the input must conform to the floatvalue production rule in the following grammar, after leading and trailing whitespace characters are removed:
* Here digit is a Unicode decimal digit (character in the Unicode general category Nd). Case is not significant, so, for example, "inf", "Inf", "INFINITY", and "iNfINity" are all acceptable spellings for positive infinity.
* Otherwise, if the argument is an integer or a floating point number, a floating point number with the same value (within Python's floating point precision) is returned. If the argument is outside the range of a Python float, an OverflowError will be raised.
* If no argument is given, 0.0 is returned.

>>> float('+1.23')  
1.23 
>>> float('   -12345\n') 
-12345 
>>> float('1e-003')  
0.001 
>>> float('+1E6')  
1000000 
>>> float('-Infinity')  
-inf