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Python Dates and Times in Python (2014) Let's Build a Timed Quiz App Timestamp Ordering

Posted by David Hackett
David Hackett
3,191 Points

is kwargs not the key here?

I thought that my use of kwargs would let me take in as many args as needed... then I would unpack them into a list, sort the list and pop the first item (although maybe it should be the last- but I'm failing before that!)

timestamp.py 
# If you need help, look up datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp()
# Also, remember that you *will not* know how many timestamps
# are coming in.

def timestamp_oldest(**kwargs):
  posix_list = []
  for key, value in kwargs.iteritems():
    posix_list.append(key,value)

  posix_list.sort()
  return posix_list[0]

1 Answer

Dan Johnson
Dan Johnson
40,533 Points
Dan Johnson
Dan Johnson
40,533 Points

Using two asterisks will pack values into a dictionary, so you'd be expecting named arguments. In this challenge you're being passed in an unknown number of positional arguments so use a single asterisk instead:

def timestamp_oldest(*args):
  # ...