Without looking at the documentation (or running the code), describe the outputs of the following 4 function calls:
from datetime import datetime datetime.datetime.now() datetime.datetime.today() datetime.datetime.now().date() datetime.datetime.today().date()
Post your answers as a comment.
I’ll play! I don’t know python though.
datetime.datetime.now() = 40422.6593443287
datetime.datetime.today() = 40422
datetime.datetime.now().date() = 0
datetime.datetime.today().date() = 40422
How did I do?
You did okay, but since you’re not familiar with the datetime library, you got the return values right. I’ll translate your results into:
now() = “date and time”
today() = “date only”
now().date() = “nonsensical”
today().date() = “date only”
The funny thing is that the main difference between now() and today() is the timezone. For most installations, they return the exact same value. So, even though you would think today() was a date, it’s actually a date + time.
The date() function strips off the time component (as you assumed), and returns an object with “date only”. So, now().date() and today().date() are the same thing.
Here are the official results:
In [8]: datetime.datetime.now()
Out[8]: datetime.datetime(2010, 9, 2, 13, 6, 53, 332016)
In [9]: datetime.datetime.today()
Out[9]: datetime.datetime(2010, 9, 2, 13, 6, 55, 153545)
In [10]: datetime.datetime.now().date()
Out[10]: datetime.date(2010, 9, 2)
In [11]: datetime.datetime.today().date()
Out[11]: datetime.date(2010, 9, 2)
That’s not intuitive. Who would expect the first two results?