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

Posted by Andrew Galloway
Andrew Galloway
3,137 Points

Why is *args coming through as a tuple instead of a list?

My function can't sort the provided input and I have no idea why.

timestamp.py 
import datetime

def timestamp_oldest(*args):
    timestamps = list()
    for n in args:
        timestamps.append(datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(n))
    timestamps = timestamps.sort()
    return min(timestamps)

1 Answer

William Li
PLUS
William Li
Courses Plus Student 26,868 Points
William Li
William Li
Courses Plus Student 26,868 Points

Hi, Andrew, Yes, the args always come through as tuple.

For this challenge, there're two approaches: 1. convert the tuple into list using the list() function, sort it, then the 1st item on the sorted list is the smallest; 2. Python has a built-in min() function, when passing in tuple as argument to this function, it'd returns the smallest item on the tuple.

Return the oldest one as a datetime object.

after you pick out the smallest element from the tuple, the final step is pass it as argument to datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp() to convert it to datetime object.

import datetime

def timestamp_oldest(*args):
  return datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(min(args))

Hope it helps.

Andrew Galloway
Andrew Galloway
3,137 Points

Thank you William Li :) That is very helpful.