Python timedelta issue with negative values

Question

Hi I need some help to understand why this is happening. I have a method to track \'time remaining\' in an event program:

def get_program_time_budget(self):
         


        

Answer 1

Why?

Possibly as a unintended side effect of the way // and % are defined.

Possibly because it makes it easier to implement the datetime class. Five minutes before the epoch is 23:55, not 0:-5.

It doesn't really matter. Just know that it's how days, seconds, and microseconds get normalized. And that it can easily be worked around.

def format_timedelta(td):
    if td < timedelta(0):
        return '-' + format_timedelta(-td)
    else:
        # Change this to format positive timedeltas the way you want
        return str(td)

 >>> format_timedelta(timedelta(minutes=-5))
 '-0:05:00'