converting time data which is saved as a string to an integer in seconds

Question

I have some time data that I read into a numpy array as a string. It's in the format

x = ['11:13:01.337 AM', '11:13:03.337 AM', '11:13:05.337 AM']

I want to be able to plot this cleanly over an indefinite amount of time, let's say the data goes for 4 hours. How can I convert this into a reasonable form to plot? I am not sure what form would be best so suggestions would be helpful. As you can probably tell I'm a noob, my boss and I appreciate the help!

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 25 '18 at 22:31

Unlike time.strptime, datetime.strptime can parse such strings, including microseconds, and you can convert the result to a number (seconds since midnight):

import datetime
def parse(s):
    d = datetime.datetime.strptime(s, "%I:%M:%S.%f %p")
    return 3600 * d.hour + 60 * d.minute + d.second + d.microsecond * 1e-6

And use it like this:

x = ['11:13:01.337 AM', '11:13:03.337 AM', '11:13:05.337 AM']
print([parse(s) for s in x])

This should be safe even in the presence of DST changes because strptime merely parses the time, and does not attempt any such semantic conversions

converting time data which is saved as a string to an integer in seconds

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