SageTeX: Number formatting

Question

The following example:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{sagetex}
\begin{document}
    \sage{0.1*0.1}
\end{document}

gives

which is totally undesirable.

A brief googling shows that Sage does recognize number formatting such as

How can I utilize such feature in LaTeX? Obviously I cannot write

    \sage{"%.3f"%(.1*.1)}

due to the special meaning of %.

Edit

This question is solved with two independent answers. However, I would like to know if there is any official way to assign formatting once and for all. Maybe something like

\begin{sagesilent}
    please print only two digits thank you
\end{sagesilent}

and

\begin{sagesilent}
    from now on ten digits please
\end{sagesilent}

Just like we use \pgfkeys{/pgf/number format/foo=bar} to configure \pgfmathprintnumber.

Answer 1

One of the advantages of using sagetex is that you get Python plus all the other mathematical ability such as graph theory, built in functions, and more. The documentation here explains how to get decimal digits of precision by using .n(digits=k) to get k decimal digits. Note that digits=1 is an exceptional case.

\documentclass[12point]{article}%
\usepackage{sagetex}%  use Sage for it's math ability
\pagestyle{empty} % remove the page numbers
\begin{document}
The documentation says ``As an exceptional case, digits $=1$ usually    leads 
to $2$ digits (one significant) in the decimal output''\\\\
$\pi \approx \sage{pi.n(digits=2)}$ or \\
$\pi \approx \sage{pi.n(digits=3)}$ or \\
$\pi \approx \sage{pi.n(digits=8)}$ or, if you must, \\
$\pi \approx \sage{pi.n(digits=50)}$\\\\
You change the digits in the calculation so that $(0.1)(0.1)$ is 
$\sage{(.1*.1).n(digits=2)}$..
\end{document}

The output is below:

I'm not sure why digits=2 is giving the 0 at the end, though.

Answer 2

Others have mentioned \percent, and the use of .n(), but I wanted to mention a third way which is a little silly but the method is sometimes useful for more complex formatting. Try something like this:

\begin{sagesilent}
def twodigits(x):
    return "%.3f" % x 

# or, more in the Python 3 spirit:
def threedigits(x):
    return "{:.3f}".format(float(x))
\end{sagesilent}

Then, in your text, do

blah $\sage{twodigits(.1 * .1)}$ blah

There's no "official" way to declare that all numbers be displayed to a certain number of decimal places, but in your document you can define such a function and consistently use it to achieve the same result.

Answer 3

As the manual says: use \percent for that purpose.

Quote from the manual:

The \percent macro makes everyone happy.

For example

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{sagetex}
\begin{document}
    \sage{"\percent.3f"\percent(.1*.1)}    
\end{document}

gives