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Python Dates and Times in Python (2014) Let's Build a Timed Quiz App Timestamp Ordering

TIMESTAMP FUNCTION

Hi Team, please I need information on how the timestamp function works...

timestamp.py
from datetime import datetime

def timestamp_oldest(list_stamp):
    for x in range(len(list_stamp)):
        list_temp = [0]
        dt_object = datetime.fromtimestamp(float(list_stamp[x]))
        list_temp = dt_object.append
    timestamp = list_temp.sort()
    return timestamp[0]

2 Answers

Hi, i'm confused how timestamp works!!!!!!

To convert POSIX time to datetime, you can use datetime_variable = datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(posix_variable) where posix_variable is a POSIX timestamp.

In the line def timestamp_oldest(list_stamp):, you have a single parameter named list_stamp. The challenge wants the function to be able to take any number of arguments, such as by using *args. args would then be a tuple containing all of the POSIX timestamps. You can convert a tuple to a list by calling list(args).

To create an empty list, you can set list_temp = [].

You don't need to use append in this challenge if you convert your arguments to a list directly, but if dt_object has the method append, the line list_temp = dt_object.append will set list_temp to the built-in method append of the class of dt_object. To append the value of dt_object to list_temp, you could do list_temp.append(dt_object).

In the line timestamp = list_temp.sort(), list_temp becomes sorted and timestamp is of NoneType. If you want timestamp to be a reference to a sorted list and list_temp to be an unsorted list, you could do

timestamp = list_temp[:]
timestamp.sort()