Why does this python function return a value of 0 in field calculator?

Question

I am trying to calculate the percentage of a total which the median value makes. I have a column with the median column labelled (i.e. 1st,2nd,3rd,4th column is median), the columns of values and the total of all values. I wrote a small python function in the Codeblock and it returns a value of 0 rather than a percentage. All the fields involved are dobule. I know I did this correctly before but I've tried almost everything to fix my code and cannot get it to return anything other than 0. Here is a screenshot of what I did in field calculator:

And here is the code written out:

def medfind(peri1,peri2,peri3,peri4,peri5,peri6,peri7,index,tot):
      dict = {1:peri1,2:peri2,3:peri3,4:peri4,5:peri5,6:peri6,7:peri7}
      return dict[index]/tot

I have double checked all the fields and everything does have a value. I just can't figure out why it's not working. This is in a .shp by the way, and I have previously used this function to success.

Answer 1

I think Python is running into cases where dict[index] and tot are both integer values (even though they are defined as doubles in the Shapefile). Because of integer division you are ending up with 0 as the answer. For example:

>>> dict = { 1:1 }
>>> tot = 5
>>> dict[1]/tot
0

To fix it, simply cast the first parameter to a float:

>>> dict = { 1:1 }
>>> tot = 5
>>> float(dict[1]) / tot
0.20000000000000001

So your fixed code will be:

def medfind(peri1,peri2,peri3,peri4,peri5,peri6,peri7,index,tot):
  dict = {1:peri1,2:peri2,3:peri3,4:peri4,5:peri5,6:peri6,7:peri7}
  return float(dict[index])/tot