Welcome to the Treehouse Community
Want to collaborate on code errors? Have bugs you need feedback on? Looking for an extra set of eyes on your latest project? Get support with fellow developers, designers, and programmers of all backgrounds and skill levels here with the Treehouse Community! While you're at it, check out some resources Treehouse students have shared here.
Looking to learn something new?
Treehouse offers a seven day free trial for new students. Get access to thousands of hours of content and join thousands of Treehouse students and alumni in the community today.
Start your free trial![](https://ecs-static.teamtreehouse.com/assets/views/marketing/shared/community-banner-white-47072046c51352fe6a69f5e691ff5700b28bb11d45197d7bdf066d9ea3f72d0c.webp)
![Elizabeth McInerney](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/78b99013b1e483da07a7b6ed77c9f32f?s=96&d=https%3A%2F%2Fecs-static.teamtreehouse.com%2Fassets%2Fcontent%2Fdefault_avatar-445fbbabfc8dc9188fb5967fe43322ee0c3e0dd1e10f378bf8343784af5a13eb.webp&r=pg)
Elizabeth McInerney
3,175 Pointstime_worked
In the video Manipulating Time Already, in Dates and Times, I don't understand how he can use a dir on time_worked when time_worked is just a variable set to an equation (datetime.datetime.now() - treehouse_start).
1 Answer
![Chris Freeman](https://uploads.teamtreehouse.com/production/profile-photos/1153532/micro_image.jpg)
Chris Freeman
Treehouse Moderator 68,425 PointsSomething to remember: Everything in Python is an object. When assigning a variable it is going to be some object based upon the objects used in the equation. There is a bit of magic involved with datetime
. When two datetime
objects are added or subtracted the result is a timedelta
object. You can use timedelta
objects to directly add and subtract to other datetime
and get a datetime
object result.
datatime.datetime.now()
yields a datetime
object
- If
treehouse_start
is adatetime
object,time_worked
will be atimedelta
object. - If
treehouse_start
is atimedelta
object,time_worked
will be adatetime
object.
So the dir()
is returning the attributes of the datetime
object.