title: removing a % sign and parsing result as an integer
body: <p>I am scraping an XML file and returning a load of percentages, pulled out directly as a percentage sometimes negative with the % sign already attached e.g. </p>
  
  <pre><code>-38%
  -2%
  4%
  25%
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I am trying to do a filter such as this: </p>
  
  <pre><code>if percentage &lt; 20.0 : continue;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>However I cannot perform this filter, I assume as a result of the % symbol. </p>
  
  <p>For reference I use:</p>
  
  <pre><code>cell['roi']
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>To get the percentages, iterating through each row using: </p>
  
  <pre><code>for row in xmlload1['rows']:
      cell = row["cell"]
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>How do I get around this % symbol? Is there an easy way?</p>