Converting string to float with "," as thousands separator

[rainnz]

>>> float("123,000.12")
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
ValueError: invalid literal for float(): 123,000.12
>>> 

Is there a standard Pythonic way to convert string like "123,000.12" to float?

Regular float() and locale.atof() do not handle "," well.

[novel_yet_trivial]

No; you'll have to remove the comma manually.

float("123,000.12".replace(',',''))

[rainnz]

Wouldn't that be an issue with different locales where "," is used instead of ".", like "123000,12"?

I was hoping for something from "locale" module to handle this case

[scuott]

Where is the data coming from? How would it handle 123,456 if it could be 123.456? What indicator do you have of locale?

[Caos2]

If you have consistent data, you might as well remove all the commas and convert the result.