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List:       python-ideas
Subject:    [Python-ideas] timedelta.strptime() and timedelta.strftime()
From:       "Thomas Mc Kay" <thomas.d.mckay () gmail ! com>
Date:       2023-02-02 21:42:25
Message-ID: 167537414546.12897.11251367579661366116 () mail ! python ! org
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I was looking for a simple intuitive way to parse a timedelta from a string. The best \
I could find feels clunky at best: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4628122/

Solution 1 looks like this:
```
from datetime import datetime, timedelta
t = datetime.strptime('05:20:25', '%H:%M:%S')
delta = timedelta(hours=t.hour, minutes=t.minute, seconds=t.second)
```

Solution 2 looks like this:
```
from datetime import datetime, timedelta
t = datetime.strptime('05:20:25', '%H:%M:%S')
delta = t - datetime.combine(t.date(), time.min)
```

Solution 3 looks like this:
```
from datetime import timedelta
import re
match = re.match(r'(?P<hours>\d{2}):(?P<minutes>\d{2}):(?P<seconds>\d{2})', \
'05:20:25') delta = timedelta(**match.groupdict())
```

Formatting back to strings is as verbose:
```
string = f'{delta.hours:02d}:{delta.minutes:02d}:{delta.seconds:02d}'

I think it would be nicer and more intuitive if timedelta had strptime and strftime \
like datetime has. ```
delta = timedelta.strptime('05:20:25', '%H:%M:%S')  # timedelta(hours=5, minutes , \
seconds%) string = delta.strftime('%H:%M:%S')  # '05:20:25'
```

The reason I would like this in the standard lib (vs maintaining my own helpers) is \
that :  a) it feels very natural, especially after years of using these methods on \
datetime.  b) there's currently three ways to do it that I've seen in the wild \
(documented above). Having this in the std lib would help with the ZoP "There should \
be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it." (the "obvious" part of this \
statement is covered in (a)).

I'm sure there's corner cases I'm not seeing that make this more complicated to \
implement than it seems... Let me know.

Cheers,

Thomas
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