How to take the nth digit of a number in python

Question

I want to take the nth digit from an N digit number in python. For example:

number = 9876543210
i = 4
number[i] # should return 6

How can I do something like that in python? Should I change it to string first and then change it to int for the calculation?

Answer 1

You can do it with integer division and remainder methods

def get_digit(number, n):
    return number // 10**n % 10

get_digit(987654321, 0)
# 1

get_digit(987654321, 5)
# 6

The // performs integer division by a power of ten to move the digit to the ones position, then the % gets the remainder after division by 10. Note that the numbering in this scheme uses zero-indexing and starts from the right side of the number.

Answer 2

First treat the number like a string

number = 9876543210
number = str(number)

Then to get the first digit:

number[0]

The fourth digit:

number[3]

EDIT:

This will return the digit as a character, not as a number. To convert it back use:

int(number[0])