On May 12, 7:46 am, HMS Surprise <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: [first message]
HS ==> I need to convert the string below into epoch seconds so that I can perform substractions and additions. JM ==> I presume you mean "seconds since the epoch". You don't need to do that. HS ==> I assume I will need to break it up into a time_t struct and use mktime. JM ==> You assume wrongly. The time module exists (IMVHO) solely as a crutch for people who are converting C etc code that uses the time.h functions from the C standard library. If you are starting off from scratch, use the Python datetime module -- especially if you need to store and manipulate pre-1970 dates; e.g. the date of birth of anyone aged more than about 37.5 years :-) HS ==> Two questions if you will please: Is there a way to use multiple separator characters for split similar to awk's [|] style? JM ==> Only if you can find such a way in the manual. HS ==> Could you point to an example of a python time_t struct? JM ==> Python doesn't have that; it's a C concept HS ==> 05/11/2007 15:30 [second message] HS==> > Could you point to an example of a python time_t struct? Or maybe that should be a tm struct??? JM ==> See previous answer. [third message] HS ==> Sorry, reading a little closer I see that the time tuple is apparently an ordinary list. JM ==> Huh? A tuple is a tuple. A tuple is not a list, not even a very extraordinary one. If you are desperate to use the time module, try this: >>> import time >>> s = "05/11/2007 15:30" >>> fmt = "%m/%d/%Y %H:%M" # Given the current date, I'm presuming that your example indicates that you adhere to the "month-first-contrary-to-common-sense" religion :-) >>> time.strptime(s, fmt) (2007, 5, 11, 15, 30, 0, 4, 131, -1) otherwise: >>> import datetime >>> d1 = datetime.datetime.strptime(s, fmt) >>> d1 datetime.datetime(2007, 5, 11, 15, 30) >>> d2 = datetime.datetime(2007, 5, 1) >>> d2 datetime.datetime(2007, 5, 1, 0, 0) >>> delta = d1 - d2 >>> delta datetime.timedelta(10, 55800) >>> days_diff = delta.days + delta.seconds / 60. / 60. / 24. >>> days_diff 10.645833333333334 Do read the datetime module documentation for more info ... in particular the timedelta object has a microseconds attribute; in general there is a whole heap of functionality in there. HTH, John -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
