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gh-132642: Add documentation on how to render human-readable timedelta object #133825

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Merged
merged 15 commits into from
May 10, 2025
16 changes: 16 additions & 0 deletions Doc/library/datetime.rst
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -261,6 +261,22 @@ A :class:`timedelta` object represents a duration, the difference between two
>>> (d.days, d.seconds, d.microseconds)
(-1, 86399, 999999)

The string representation of :class:`!timedelta` objects can be confusing,
but the following recipe can be used to produce a more readable format:

.. code-block:: pycon

>>> def pretty_timedelta(td):
... if td.days >= 0:
... return str(td)
... return f'-({-td!s})'
...
>>> d = timedelta(hours=-1)
>>> str(d) # not human-friendly
'-1 day, 23:00:00'
>>> pretty_timedelta(d)
'-(1:00:00)'


Class attributes:

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