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Sometimes we have to deal with date and time related problems in programming. In Python, date and time are not data types themselves. Despite this, Python provides a large number of functions and libraries to help deal with such problems. One of the problems related to date and time is to calculate the time interval between two time strings.

This tutorial demonstrates different ways to calculate the time interval between two strings in Python.

datetime.strptime()Calculate the time difference between two time strings in Python using

datatimeThe class provides many functions for the user to work with date and time in Python. strptime()The functions are used to parse a string value to represent the time according to a given format. The string value and the time format are stored as function arguments.

Here is a sample program:

time_1 = datetime.strptime("05:00:00", "%H:%M:%S")
time_2 = datetime.strptime("10:00:00", "%H:%M:%S")

time_interval = time_2 - time_1
print(time_difference)

Output:

5:00:00

Here, datetime.strptime()the function is used to store two time strings in two variables. Note that %H, %Mand %Sare representatives of Hours, Minutesand Seconds. After the two time strings are stored with their time format, the time interval between them is calculated by simply subtracting the two variables.

time.sleep()Calculate the time difference between two time strings in Python using

There is a module in Python called timethe time module which helps in printing time in the form of objects, numbers, and strings. It also provides many functions to perform tasks like measuring time and measuring the efficiency of your code.

timeOne of the functions in Python's module is sleep()the suspend function. This function simply pauses the execution of the current code block for a period of time specified by the user.

Take a look at this sample code:

import time

time_1 = time.time()

time.sleep(20)

time_2 = time.time()
time_interval = time_2 - time_1
print(time_interval)

Output:

20.005916118621826

Note that in the above code, the function timefrom the module is also used time(). This function helps return the number of seconds that have passed since January 1, 1970, 00:00:00 UTC. sleep()The variable 20 in the function parameter represents 20 seconds. In this code, the two time values ​​are since the epoch, and between them, the code execution stops for 20 seconds.

datetime.timedelta()Calculate the time difference between two time strings in Python using

There is also a datetimePython module called module. This module also provides many classes and functions to work with dates, times, and time intervals.

timedelta()The class is datetimeone of the functions of the module. It is used to represent a specific duration or the difference between two dates and times. These functions contain many parameters such as days, milliseconds, microseconds, seconds, minutes, hours, and weeks.

User can mention these parameters as per the program need. See the sample program here:

import datetime

time_1 = datetime.timedelta(hours=10, minutes=20, seconds=30)
time_2 = datetime.timedelta(hours=20, minutes=30, seconds=45)
print(time_2 - time_1)

Please note that in the above code, not all parameters timedeltaare mentioned in the class.