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Python 101: Interactively learn how to program with Python 3

The time Module

Explore how to work with Python's time module to convert epoch seconds to readable dates, pause program execution, format time strings, and retrieve the current time in seconds. This lesson helps you effectively manage and manipulate date and time information in Python applications.

We'll cover the following...

The time module provides the Python developer access to various time-related functions. The time module is based around what it known as an epoch, the point when time starts. For Unix systems, the epoch was in 1970. To find out what the epoch is on your system, try running the following:

Python
import time
print(time.gmtime(0))
#time.struct_time(tm_year=1970, tm_mon=1, tm_mday=1, tm_hour=0, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=1, tm_isdst=0)

I ran this on Windows 7 and it too seems to think that time began in

  1. Anyway, in this section, we will be studying the following time-related functions:
  • time.ctime
  • time.sleep
  • time.strftime
  • time.time

Let’s get started!

time.ctime

The time.ctime function will convert a time in seconds since the epoch to a ...