Getting the closest date to a given date

Question

Given this base date:

base_date = \"10/29 06:58 AM\"

I want to find a tuple within the list that contains the closest date to the bas

Answer 1

Linear search?

import sys
import time

base_date = "10/29 06:58 AM"

def str_to_my_time(my_str):
    return time.mktime(time.strptime(my_str, "%m/%d %I:%M %p")) 
                # assume year 1900...

base_dt = str_to_my_time(base_date)

list_date = [('10/30 02:18 PM', '-103', '-107'), 
             ('10/30 02:17 PM', '+100', '-110'),
             ('10/29 02:15 AM', '-101', '-109')]


best_delta = sys.maxint
best_match = None

for t in list_date:
    the_dt = str_to_my_time(t[0])
    delta_sec = the_dt - base_dt
    if (delta_sec >= 0) and (delta_sec < best_delta):
        best_delta = delta_sec
        best_match = t

print best_match, best_delta

Producing:

('10/30 02:17 PM', '+100', '-110') 112740.0