How to suppress scientific notation when printing float values?

Using the newer version ''.format (also remember to specify how many digit after the . you wish to display, this depends on how small is the floating number). See this example:

>>> a = -7.1855143557448603e-17
>>> '{:f}'.format(a)
'-0.000000'

as shown above, default is 6 digits! This is not helpful for our case example, so instead we could use something like this:

>>> '{:.20f}'.format(a)
'-0.00000000000000007186'

Update

Starting in Python 3.6, this can be simplified with the new formatted string literal, as follows:

>>> f'{a:.20f}'
'-0.00000000000000007186'

'%f' % (x/y)

but you need to manage precision yourself. e.g.,

'%f' % (1/10**8)

will display zeros only.
details are in the docs

Or for Python 3 the equivalent old formatting or the newer style formatting

Another option, if you are using pandas and would like to suppress scientific notation for all floats, is to adjust the pandas options.

import pandas as pd
pd.options.display.float_format = '{:.2f}'.format

With newer versions of Python (2.6 and later), you can use ''.format() to accomplish what @SilentGhost suggested:

'{0:f}'.format(x/y)

And since PEP-498 is over 8 years old, Python 3.6 and later supports:

f'{x/y:f}'

Someone commented on printing lists, so here's a bonus 1-liner:

[f'{x:f}' for x in long_list]