Difference between two dates in seconds

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Wed, 27 Sep 2006 20:16:52 +0200, Fredrik Lundh wrote:

> Claes at work wrote:
> 
>> Please tell me there is a simpler way than subtracting two datetimes
>> to get a timedelta and then compute
>> 
>> days * number of seconds per day + seconds
>> 
>> from it myself??
> 
> why would you have to do that yourself?  why not let Python do it for 
> you?  here's the code:
> 
>     seconds = td.days * 86400 + td.seconds

I'm sure somebody as experienced as Fredrik doesn't need to be told why
peppering code with magic constants like 84600 are a less than ideal
solution -- and for those who do need to be told, carefully compare what I
wrote to what Fredrik wrote to see one of those reasons.

Arguably a better solution would be to do this:

seconds = td.days * 24*60*60 + td.seconds

Still not ideal though, although that depends on just how often you need
to convert days to or from seconds.


-- 
Steven.