Beginner String formatting question

[chaosgy at gmail.com]

On 1月27日, 上午1时02分, JAMoor... at gmail.com wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I am trying to write a simple program that will accept an integral
> "time" input in the HHMMSS format and output a "HH:MM:SS" form.  My
> code is as follows:
> ========================
> import string
>
> def FormatTime(time):
>   '''Converts an HHMMSS string to HH:MM:SS format.'''
>
>   timeString = str(time)  #converts the num to string
>
>   hours    = [timeString[0], timeString[1]]
>   minutes = [timeString[2], timeString[3]]
>   seconds = [timeString[4], timeString[5]]
>
>   Ftime = "%s:%s:%s",(hours,minutes,seconds)
>   clock = Ftime.join()
>
>   return clock
>   ===========================
>
> when I run it from IDLE, I get this:
>
> >>> Format.FormatTime(time)
>
> ['1', '1', ':', '2', '2', ':', '3', '3']
> ['1', '1', ':', '2', '2', ':', '3', '3']
>
> My questions-
> 1) Why is this function printing out twice?
> 2)It may be a formatting issue, but I want to have the output as
> "HH:MM:SS", rather than having it broken out into each cell.  I
> thought the 'join' command would do this, but I must not be using it
> properly/understanding something.
> 3)as a side note, I've noticed that the parameter "time" passed in
> must be passed in as a string, otherwise I receive an error that
> "time" is unsubscriptable.  Am I unable to pass in an int and then
> convert it to a string within the function with str()?
>
> I've been at this for a while, so I may not be able to see the forest
> through the trees at this point.  I'd greatly appreciate any
> suggestions or instruction on these mistakes.
>
> Best,
>
> Jimmy

import string


def FormatTime(time):
  '''Converts an HHMMSS string to HH:MM:SS format.'''


  timeString = "%06d" % (time, )  #converts the num to string

  return timeString[:2] + ":" + timeString[2:4] + ":" +
timeString[4:];

this works