TST: fix unit test on platforms with different default libc float formatting

Author: wesm

RELEASE.rst

@@ -194,6 +194,7 @@ pandas 0.9.0
     such as lambdas, to GroupBy.aggregate
   - Fix DataFrame.apply with axis=1 on a non-unique index (#1878)
   - Proper handling of Index subclasses in pandas.unique (#1759)
+  - Set index names in DataFrame.from_records (#1744)
 
 pandas 0.8.1
 ============

pandas/tests/test_format.py

@@ -374,10 +374,17 @@ def test_to_string_small_float_values(self):
         df = DataFrame({'a': [1.5, 1e-17, -5.5e-7]})
 
         result = df.to_string()
-        expected = ('              a\n'
-                    '0  1.500000e+00\n'
-                    '1  1.000000e-17\n'
-                    '2 -5.500000e-07')
+        # sadness per above
+        if '%.4g' % 1.7e8 == '1.7e+008':
+            expected = ('               a\n'
+                        '0  1.500000e+000\n'
+                        '1  1.000000e-017\n'
+                        '2 -5.500000e-007')
+        else:
+            expected = ('              a\n'
+                        '0  1.500000e+00\n'
+                        '1  1.000000e-17\n'
+                        '2 -5.500000e-07')
         self.assertEqual(result, expected)
 
         # but not all exactly zero