Python gives wrong result with .seconds attribute of timedelta data

Question

>>>print(today - date, (today - date).seconds)

[1] 63 days, 8:45:34.250649 31534
                              ↑

This is far away from the right result. 31534 seconds are much less than 63 days. Why is python giving the wrong value?

Answer 1

You are only requesting the seconds of the timedelta - you need the timedelta.total_seconds() method.

The timedelta.seconds attribute only reports the seconds from the last day of the delta.

https://docs.python.org/3/library/datetime.html#datetime.timedelta.total_seconds

import datetime

d1 = datetime.datetime.now()

d2 = datetime.datetime.now()-datetime.timedelta(days=1.4)

delta = d1-d2

print(delta, delta.seconds, delta.total_seconds(), sep="\n")

Output:

1 day, 9:35:59.999997
34559  # (9 * 60 + 35 ) * 60 + 59 ca. 34559 - the full day is not part of ".seconds" 
120959.999997