Time Functions in Python | Set 1 (time(), ctime(), sleep()…)
Last Updated :
04 Jun, 2023
Python has defined a module, “time” which allows us to handle various operations regarding time, its conversions and representations, which find its use in various applications in life. The beginning of time started measuring from 1 January, 12:00 am, 1970 and this very time is termed as “epoch” in Python.
Operations on Time in Python
Python time.time() Function
Python time() function is used to count the number of seconds elapsed since the epoch.
Python3
import time
print ("Seconds elapsed since the epoch are : ",end="")
print (time.time())
|
Python time.gmtime() Function
Python gmtime() function returns a structure with 9 values each representing a time attribute in sequence. It converts seconds into time attributes(days, years, months etc.) till specified seconds from the epoch. If no seconds are mentioned, time is calculated till the present. The structure attribute table is given below.
Index Attributes Values
0 tm_year 2008
1 tm_mon 1 to 12
2 tm_mday 1 to 31
3 tm_hour 0 to 23
4 tm_min 0 to 59
5 tm_sec 0 to 61 (60 or 61 are leap-seconds)
6 tm_wday 0 to 6
7 tm_yday 1 to 366
8 tm_isdst -1, 0, 1 where -1 means Library determines DST
Python3
import time
print ("Time calculated acc. to given seconds is : ")
print (time.gmtime())
|
Output:
Time calculated acc. to given seconds is :
time.struct_time(tm_year=2016, tm_mon=8, tm_mday=2,
tm_hour=7, tm_min=12, tm_sec=31, tm_wday=1,
tm_yday=215, tm_isdst=0)
Python time.asctime() and time.ctime() Function
Python time.asctime() function takes a time-attributed string produced by gmtime() and returns a 24-character string denoting time.Python time.ctime() function returns a 24-character time string but takes seconds as an argument and computes time till mentioned seconds. If no argument is passed, time is calculated till the present.
Python3
import time
ti = time.gmtime()
print ("Time calculated using asctime() is : ",end="")
print (time.asctime(ti))
print ("Time calculated using ctime() is : ", end="")
print (time.ctime())
|
Output:
Time calculated using asctime() is : Tue Aug 2 07:47:02 2016
Time calculated using ctime() is : Tue Aug 2 07:47:02 2016
Python time.sleep() Function
This method is used to halt the program execution for the time specified in the arguments.
Python3
import time
print ("Start Execution : ",end="")
print (time.ctime())
time.sleep(4)
print ("Stop Execution : ",end="")
print (time.ctime())
|
Output:
Start Execution : Tue Aug 2 07:59:03 2016
Stop Execution : Tue Aug 2 07:59:07 2016
Python time.mktime() Function
In this example, we have created a struct_time object with a tuple of values for each of its fields then we have passed the object to the time.mktime() to convert it to a floating-point number representing the number of seconds since the Unix epoch.
Python3
import time
my_time = time.strptime("2023-05-10 14:30:00",
"%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S")
seconds_since_epoch = time.mktime(my_time)
print("Seconds since epoch:", seconds_since_epoch)
|
Output:
Seconds since epoch: 1683709200.0
Python time.localtime() Function
In this example, we call time.localtime() with no argument to get the current local time as a struct_time.
Python3
import time
current_time = time.localtime()
print(current_time)
|
Output:
time.struct_time(tm_year=2023, tm_mon=5, tm_mday=10,
tm_hour=12, tm_min=42, tm_sec=51, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=130, tm_isdst=0)
Python time.strftime() Function
It takes a format string as its first argument, which specifies the desired format of the output string.
Python3
import time
now = time.localtime()
formatted_time = time.strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S", now)
print(formatted_time)
|
Output:
2023-05-10 13:42:04
Please Login to comment...