Extract first digit in a number

[spesseh]

Hi all.

This is probably quite a newbish question, but i have a input for a number. From the entered number, i want to extract the first digit in the number. So if the typed in number is 43, i want to extract the 4, but not the 3. In another program i would think of a left operation to extract the lefternmost digit. However i cannot make this work in python.
How would one write such a extract operation?

[Kruptein]

if digit is in string form: digit[:1] if the digit is an integer: str(digit)[:1] *or even easier: str(digit)[0]

[Tech B]

If you need it to be an integer you could use atoi() from the locale to pull it from the string. Use atof() for float points.

import locale
nmbr = raw_input("enter a number")
firstNum = nmbr[0]
realNumber = locale.atoi(firstNum)

[snippsat]

That is making it more difficult than it need to be Tech B.

n = raw_input('enter a number: ')
first_n = int(n[0])
print first_n

[Tech B]

I keep forgetting about int().... And yeah that would be a simpler way lol. Then what use would locale.atoi() be if int() serves the same purpose?

[hondros]

I believe that whole module was deprecated as of version 2 or so. I think anyways.

[spesseh]

Thanks! Worked great by using the string and then slice it.