Generate time sequence with step 7 seconds

Question

How would you generate the following sequence of strings in Python?

00:00:00
00:00:07
00:00:14
00:00:21
...
00:00:49
00:00:56
00:01:03

The step is 7 seconds. The end is about 03:30:+/-

I would come with solution that uses modular arithmetic (first 1200 to have hours, than 60 to have minutes and the remainder are seconds and the numbers should be converted to strings and "one-place" strings should be prefixed by "0").

Is there some smarter (pythonic) solution with using some helper generators in standard library or list comprehension?

Have a look at [this SO question](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/100210/python-easy-way-to-add-n-seconds-to-a-datetime-time) — Lev Levitsky, Mar 16 '12 at 11:15
Possible duplicate of [Python generate dates series](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4479800/python-generate-dates-series) — Ronak Shah, Sep 25 '17 at 08:52

score 9 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 16 '12 at 11:14

def yield_times():
    from datetime import date, time, datetime, timedelta
    start = datetime.combine(date.today(), time(0, 0))
    yield start.strftime("%H:%M:%S")
    while True:
        start += timedelta(seconds=7)
        yield start.strftime("%H:%M:%S")

>>> gen = yield_times()
>>> for ii in range(5):
...     print gen.next()
... 
00:00:00
00:00:07
00:00:14
00:00:21
00:00:28

score 5 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 16 '12 at 11:15

5

Try this one

from datetime import datetime, timedelta

now = datetime(2000, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0)
last = datetime(2000, 1, 1, 3, 30, 0)
delta = timedelta(seconds=7)

times = []
while now < last:
    times.append(now.strftime('%H:%M:%S'))
    now += delta

answered Mar 16 '12 at 11:15

fajran

2,769
22
13

score 3 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 16 '12 at 11:20

I think you're over complicating things by looking at generators and list comprehension. The Python datetime module will do this easily.

from datetime import datetime, timedelta

t = datetime(2012, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0)

while t < datetime(2012, 1, 1, 3, 30, 0):
    print t.time()

    t = t + timedelta(seconds=7)

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Jun 25 '14 at 19:13

This generates times for every 5 minutes between 9:00AM and 2.00PM==14:00.

In [1]: from datetime import datetime

In [2]: [str(datetime(2012, 1, 1, hr, min, 0).time()) for hr in range(9,14) for min in range(0,60,5)]
Out[2]:
['09:00:00',
 '09:05:00',
 '09:10:00',
 '09:15:00',
 '09:20:00',
 '09:25:00',
 '09:30:00',
 '09:35:00',
 '09:40:00',
 '09:45:00',
 '09:50:00',
 '09:55:00',
 '10:00:00',
 '10:05:00',
 '10:10:00',
 '10:15:00',
 '10:20:00',
 '10:25:00',
 '10:30:00',
 '10:35:00',
 '10:40:00',
 '10:45:00',
 '10:50:00',
 '10:55:00',
 '11:00:00',
 '11:05:00',
 '11:10:00',
 '11:15:00',
 '11:20:00',
 '11:25:00',
 '11:30:00',
 '11:35:00',
 '11:40:00',
 '11:45:00',
 '11:50:00',
 '11:55:00',
 '12:00:00',
 '12:05:00',
 '12:10:00',
 '12:15:00',
 '12:20:00',
 '12:25:00',
 '12:30:00',
 '12:35:00',
 '12:40:00',
 '12:45:00',
 '12:50:00',
 '12:55:00',
 '13:00:00',
 '13:05:00',
 '13:10:00',
 '13:15:00',
 '13:20:00',
 '13:25:00',
 '13:30:00',
 '13:35:00',
 '13:40:00',
 '13:45:00',
 '13:50:00',
 '13:55:00']

In [3]:

Generate time sequence with step 7 seconds

4 Answers4

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