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

import time
import sys

#The Function
def to_sec(date_string):
    return time.mktime(time.strptime(date_string, '%m/%d %I:%M %p'))


#The Test
base_date = "10/29 06:58 AM"
base_date_sec = to_sec(base_date)
result = None
difference = sys.maxint
list_date = [
        ('10/30 02:18 PM', '-103', '-107'),
        ('10/30 02:17 PM', '+100', '-110'), 
        ('10/29 02:15 AM', '-101', '-109') ]
for date_str in list_date:
    diff_sec = to_sec(date_str[0])-base_date_sec
    if diff_sec >= 0 and diff_sec < difference:
        result = date_str
        difference = diff_sec
print result