def METHOD_NAME(num):
  """Creates a shorter string version for a given number of objects.
  Args:
    num: The number of objects to be shortened.
  Returns:
    shortened string version for this number. It takes the largest
    scale (thousand, million or billion) smaller than the number and divides it
    by that scale, indicated by a suffix with one decimal place. This will thus
    create a string of at most 6 characters, assuming num < 10^18.
    Example: 123456789 => 123.4m
  """
  for divisor_exp, suffix in reversed(_EXP_TEN_STRING):
    if num >= 10**divisor_exp:
      quotient = '%.1lf' % (float(num) / 10**divisor_exp)
      return quotient + suffix
  return str(num)