[python] python ValueError: invalid literal for float()

I've a script which reads temperature data:

def get_temp(socket, channels):

    data = {}
    for ch in channels:
        socket.sendall('KRDG? %s\n' % ch)
        time.sleep(0.2)
        temp = socket.recv(32).rstrip('\r\n')

        data[ch] = float(temp)

Sometimes, the script fails on the line which converts the values to float:

File "./projector.py", line 129, in get_temp
data[ch] = float(temp)
ValueError: invalid literal for float(): +135.057E+0
+078.260E+0
+00029

but this is NOT an invalid literal. If I enter this into any python shell,

float(+135.057E+0)

then it correctly returns 135.057.

So what is the problem?

Watch out for possible unintended literals in your argument

for example you can have a space within your argument, rendering it to a string / literal:

float(' 0.33')

After making sure the unintended space did not make it into the argument, I was left with:

float(0.33) 

Like this it works like a charm.

Take away is: Pay Attention for unintended literals (e.g. spaces that you didn't see) within your input.

I had a similar issue reading the serial output from a digital scale. I was reading [3:12] out of a 18 characters long output string.

In my case sometimes there is a null character "\x00" (NUL) which magically appears in the scale's reply string and is not printed.

I was getting the error:

> '     0.00'
> 3 0 fast loop, delta =  10.0 weight =  0.0 
> '     0.00'
> 1 800 fast loop, delta = 10.0 weight =  0.0 
> '     0.00'
> 6 0 fast loop, delta =  10.0 weight =  0.0
> '     0\x00.0' 
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "measure_weight_speed.py", line 172, in start
>     valueScale = float(answer_string) 
>     ValueError: invalid literal for float(): 0

After some research I wrote few lines of code that work in my case.

replyScale = scale_port.read(18)
answer = replyScale[3:12]
answer_decode = answer.replace("\x00", "")
answer_strip = str(answer_decode.strip())
print(repr(answer_strip))
valueScale = float(answer_strip)

The answers in these posts helped:

1. How to get rid of \x00 in my array of bytes?
2. Invalid literal for float(): 0.000001, how to fix error?