Curious int/float/division/math 'gotcha' in py (discussion)

So, today I was confused why on earth dividing two ints (which leaves a remainder), didn't return back an int.

In the end, I re-casted the ints as floats, performed the division, and this worked fine.

Looked through the docs, and found this:

http://docs.python.org/library/stdtypes.html

"For (plain or long) integer division, the result is an integer. The result is always rounded towards minus infinity: 1/2 is 0, (-1)/2 is -1, 1/(-2) is -1, and (-1)/(-2) is 0. Note that the result is a long integer if either operand is a long integer, regardless of the numeric value."

Has anyone else come up against this gotcha before? I'm wondering if it's better practise to always cast a number as a float/decimal, rather than an int. 

Any thoughts guys?

Cal

--- code snip ---

>>> import math

>>> math.ceil(7672 / 50)

153.0

>>> 7672 / 50

153

>>> float(7672 / 50)

153.0

>>> 7672 / 50

153

>>> type(7672)

<type 'int'>

>>> type(50)

<type 'int'>

>>> float(7672) / float(50)

153.44

>>> math.ceil(float(7672) / float(50))

154.0

>>>

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