Converting numbers to text

After trying with Learn Python The Hard Way, I’m continuing with CodeAcademy. It’s fun to do some programming again. After mulling over something significantly challenging for my rusty gears, I decided to solve the problem of converting numbers to text.

The hardest bit was taking the time to think through the issue. I committed the error of coding without thinking. Perhaps the only intelligent thing I did in phase I was working out the mydict dictionary, which did not need to be changed throughout, except that I added trillion to it.

So here’s the code without much ado. When prompted to enter a number, enter just numbers.

E.g.:

Enter a number:832743242
Eight Hundred Thirty Two Million Seven Hundred Forty Three Thousand Two Hundred Forty Two

mydict = {0:"",
          1:"one", 
          2:"two", 
          3:"three",
          4:"four",
          5:"five",
          6:"six",
          7:"seven",
          8:"eight",
          9:"nine",
          10:"ten",
          11:"eleven",
          12:"twelve",
          13:"thirteen",
          14:"fourteen",
          15:"fifteen",
          16:"sixteen",
          17:"seventeen",
          18:"eighteen",
          19:"nineteen",
          20:"twenty",
          30:"thirty",
          40:"forty",
          50:"fifty",
          60:"sixty",
          70:"seventy",
          80:"eighty",
          90:"ninety",
          100:"hundred",
          1000:"thousand",
          1000000:"million",
          1000000000:"billion",
          1000000000000:"trillion"
          }

def to_text2(num,units=1):
    #have to split the number into thousands
    low = num % 1000
    high = int(num /1000)
    #evaluate the lower part
    low_str = ""
    if low!=0:
        hundred = int(low / 100)
        #print h
        if hundred!=0:
            low_str = mydict.get(hundred) +" "+ mydict.get(100) 
        tens = (low %100)
        if tens<=20:
            if tens!=0:
                low_str = low_str + " " + mydict.get(tens)
        else:
            low_str = low_str+ " " + mydict.get(int(tens/10)*10) + " " + mydict.get(tens%10)
        
        if units!=1:
            if low_str!="":
                low_str =low_str + " " + mydict.get(units)
    if high!=0:
        return to_text2(high,units*1000) + " " + low_str.strip()
    else:   
        return low_str.strip()

input_number = eval(raw_input("Enter a number:"))
print to_text2(input_number).title()
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