A number between 0 and 1 - like a percentage but expressed as a decimal [closed]

I'm looking for a word to replace "percentage" for numbers between 0 and 1.

To explain: what I'm actually dealing with are decimals (like 0.12), semantically however they serve the purpose of percentages (the equivalent here being 12%, obviously).

So my number between 0 and 1 is not a percentage but a _______. Any ideas?

This question is similar, but has a different focus; it allows for multiple words, whereas mine needs a single word.

Solution 1:

Numbers between 0 and 1 are fractions, and fractions expressed as a decimal are decimal fractions.

decimal fraction

a fraction (as .25 = ²⁵⁄₁₀₀ or .025 = ²⁵⁄₁₀₀₀) or mixed number (as 3.025 = 3²⁵⁄₁₀₀₀) in which the denominator is a power of 10 usually expressed by use of the decimal point.

Merriam-Webster

Solution 2:

From a pure linguistics perspective, the answer is "percent".

In mathematics, a percentage is a number or ratio expressed as a fraction of 100. ^[wikipedia]

0.12 and 12% are as equivalent, as 0.1234 and 12.34% are. If the numbers you are expressing are proportional then percent is as valid as anything else.

Off-topic answer:

However, you question wasn't about linguistics, it was about naming variables in which case percent/ration/unit are all terrible variable names. When naming variables, succinctness is of far less importance than readability. Variable names can be minimised or optimised by the complier, as a programmer your role is writing human readable code first, and machine readable code second.

As a programmer, the variable name should have some better context than a unitless proportion, so re-evaluate what you are storing, determine what the actual value means, and try again (probably on Programmers.SE).