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Python

Posted by Hunter Kiely
Hunter Kiely
2,768 Points

I need help understanding an invalid keyword argument in time_machine.py

After looking at many other members posts regarding this same challenge, I am not sure if I am just approaching the task differently or am completely off base. Either way I am not sure why this doesn't work.

import datetime

starter = datetime.datetime(2015, 10, 21, 16, 29)

# Remember, you can't set "years" on a timedelta!
# Consider a year to be 365 days.

## Example
# time_machine(5, "minutes") => datetime(2015, 10, 21, 16, 34)
def time_machine(number, MHDY):
  if MHDY == 'years':
    number = (number * 365)
    MHDY = 'days'
  elif MHDY == 'months':
    number = (number * 12)
    MHDY = 'days'
  elif MHDY == 'weeks':
    number = (number * 52.1)
    MHDY = 'days'

  end_time = datetime.timedelta(MHDY = number)
  duration = starter - end_time
  return duration

1 Answer

Iain Diamond
Iain Diamond
29,379 Points

Hi Hunter,

The way I approached this problem was relying on the fact that adding datetimes and timedeltas is easy. So given a starter datetime, you could simply finish with:

  return starter + delta

this would lead to the if statements being used to construct different timedeltas depending on the string type being passed into the function, e.g.

  if time_string == 'minutes':
    delta = datetime.timedelta(minutes=num)

Once this is sorted, the only slightly tricky part is what to do about "years". Remembering that timedeltas can be constructed using minutes, hours, and days.

Please, let me know how you get on. iain

Hunter Kiely
Hunter Kiely
2,768 Points

I figured it out. Thanks for your help!