Format timedelta to string

Question

I\'m having trouble formatting a datetime.timedelta object.

Here\'s what I\'m trying to do: I have a list of objects and one of the members of the cl

Answer 1

Questioner wants a nicer format than the typical:

  >>> import datetime
  >>> datetime.timedelta(seconds=41000)
  datetime.timedelta(0, 41000)
  >>> str(datetime.timedelta(seconds=41000))
  '11:23:20'
  >>> str(datetime.timedelta(seconds=4102.33))
  '1:08:22.330000'
  >>> str(datetime.timedelta(seconds=413302.33))
  '4 days, 18:48:22.330000'

So, really there's two formats, one where days are 0 and it's left out, and another where there's text "n days, h:m:s". But, the seconds may have fractions, and there's no leading zeroes in the printouts, so columns are messy.

Here's my routine, if you like it:

def printNiceTimeDelta(stime, etime):
    delay = datetime.timedelta(seconds=(etime - stime))
    if (delay.days > 0):
        out = str(delay).replace(" days, ", ":")
    else:
        out = "0:" + str(delay)
    outAr = out.split(':')
    outAr = ["%02d" % (int(float(x))) for x in outAr]
    out   = ":".join(outAr)
    return out

this returns output as dd:hh:mm:ss format:

00:00:00:15
00:00:00:19
02:01:31:40
02:01:32:22

I did think about adding years to this, but this is left as an exercise for the reader, since the output is safe at over 1 year:

>>> str(datetime.timedelta(seconds=99999999))
'1157 days, 9:46:39'