I have a favorite NumPy wat:<p><pre><code>   &gt;&gt;&gt; import numpy as np
   &gt;&gt;&gt; &#x27;x&#x27;*np.float64(3.5)
   &#x27;xxx&#x27;
</code></pre>
(on recent NumPy releases this raises a deprecation warning)<p>Clearly the correct answer is &#x27;xxx&gt;&#x27; ;)