title: What is a clean way to convert a string percent to a float?
body: <p>I have looked in the standard library and on StackOverflow, and have not found a similar question. So, is there a way to do the following without rolling my own function? Bonus points if someone writes a beautiful function if there is no built in way.</p>
  
  <pre><code>def stringPercentToFloat(stringPercent)
      # ???
      return floatPercent
  
  p1 = "99%"
  p2 = "99.5%"
  print stringPercentToFloat(p1)
  print stringPercentToFloat(p2)
  
  &gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; 0.99
  &gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; 0.995
  </code></pre>