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Python

Posted by Trevor Wood
Trevor Wood
17,828 Points

Using variable inside of a timedelta/function

So I know you can do this to print a variable in a string.

foo = hey
print('{} Is a var'.format(foo))

but how would i insert a variable into here?

foo = 'hours'
bar = 2
print(datetime.timedelta('{}={}'.format(foo,bar))

1 Answer

Anjali Pasupathy
Anjali Pasupathy
28,883 Points

timedelta doesn't accept a String as its parameter; it accepts a key (i.e. hours, minutes, days, etc.) and a value (i.e. some integer) with the assignment operator (=) between them.

You can only insert a variable as the value in timedelta's parameter:

bar = 2
print(datetime.timedelta(hours=bar))

If you want to provide multiple options with different time units for the key, you need to either make multiple timedeltas, or you need to convert the values that correspond to those keys to values that correspond to a single key (e.g. converting hours to minutes and days to minutes so you're only working with the minutes key).

I hope this helps!

Trevor Wood
Trevor Wood
17,828 Points

Thank you! This does help!

Anjali Pasupathy
Anjali Pasupathy
28,883 Points

You're welcome!