Multiplying floats (Python 3.7)

Question

This is probably a really easy question but it's 2am and my brain is fried trying to figure out why they won't multiply together:

Prate2 = float(input("Please input the hourly rate of the plumber you would like to calculate: 
"))
Pfee2 = float(input("Please input the callout fee of the plumber you would like to calculate: 
"))
multiply = float(amountHours * Prate2)
total = (multiply) + (Pfee2)
print("The total cost of service:" ,(multiply) , "With a callout fee of",(Pfee2) , "to give a total of:", total)

It gives me an error message of "TypeError: can't multiply sequence by non-int of type 'float'"

Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

question from:https://stackoverflow.com/questions/65947796/multiplying-floats-python-3-7

Answer 1

Your amountHours is of type sequence (probably string). What you are looking for probably something like this:

multiply = float(amountHours) * Prate2

The above line cast amountHours to float, then the result of the cast is multiply with Prate2, which is also a float.

Your original code applies multiplication first, which causes the error.