Format seconds as float

Question

I wish to output:

"14:48:06.743174"

This is the closest I can get:

`"14:48:06"` 

with:

t = time.time()
time.strftime("%H:%M:%S",time.gmtime(t))

Answer 1

According to the manual on time there is no straight forward way to print microseconds (or seconds as float):

>>> time.strftime("%H:%M:%S.%f",time.gmtime(t))
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
ValueError: Invalid format string

However datetime.datetime format provides %f which is defined as:

Microsecond as a decimal number [0,999999], zero-padded on the left

>>> import datetime
>>> datetime.datetime.now().strftime('%H:%M:%S.%f')
'14:07:11.286000'

Or when you have your value stored in t = time.time(), you can use datetime.datetime.utcfromtimestam():

>>> datetime.datetime.utcfromtimestamp(t).strftime('%H:%M:%S.%f')
'12:08:32.463000'

I'm afraid that if you want to have more control over how microseconds get formatted (for example displaying only 3 places instead of 6) you will either have to crop the text (using [:-3]):

>>> datetime.datetime.utcfromtimestamp(t).strftime('%H:%M:%S.%f')[:-3]
'12:08:32.463'

Or format it by hand:

>>> '.{:03}'.format(int(dt.microsecond/1000))
'.463'