str() not returning string in my function

Question

So I've defined a recursive function numToBaseB that converts a given number in base ten into any other base between 2 and 10. The desired output is a string, but for some reason I keep getting an int.

def numToBaseB(num, b):
    if num == 0:
        return ''
    elif b > 10 or b < 2:
        return "The base has to be between 2 and 10"
    else:
        return numToBaseB(num // b, b ) + str(num % b)

So for me: numToBaseB(4, 2) would return

100

instead of the desired output:

'100'

Answer 1

Your program is working as designed:

>>> numToBaseB(1024,2)
'10000000000'
>>> numToBaseB(4,2)
'100'

Of course, if you do print(numToBaseB(4,2)) , the quotes will not be displayed.

Answer 2

If you want to have quotes though, you can always do this:

print (" ' "+numToBase(4,2)+" ' ")

But in the program, if you use str() anyways, it will be treated as string ofcourse.

:)

Edit: typing on phone, so sorry for this madness :(