How do I convert integers into high-resolution times in Python? Or how do I keep Python from dropping zeros?

Question

Currently, I'm using this to calculate the time between two messages and listing the times if they are above 20 seconds.

def time_deltas(infile): 
    entries = (line.split() for line in open(INFILE, "r")) 
    ts = {}
    for e in entries:
        if " ".join(e[2:5]) == "OuchMsg out: [O]": 
            ts[e[8]] = e[0]    
        elif " ".join(e[2:5]) == "OuchMsg in: [A]":    
            in_ts, ref_id = e[0], e[7] 
            out_ts = ts.pop(ref_id, None) 
            yield (float(out_ts),ref_id[1:-1],(float(in_ts)*10000 - float(out_ts)*10000))

            n = (float(in_ts)*10000 - float(out_ts)*10000)
            if n> 20:
                print float(out_ts),ref_id[1:-1], n

    INFILE = 'C:/Users/klee/Documents/text.txt'
    import csv 

    with open('output_file1.csv', 'w') as f: 
    csv.writer(f).writerows(time_deltas(INFILE)) 

However, there are two major errors. First of all, python drops zeros when the time is before 10, ie. 0900. And, it drops zeros making the time difference not accurate.

It looks like: 130203.08766 when it should be: 130203.087660

Answer 1

You are yield ing floats, so the csv writer turns those floats into strings as it pleases.

If you want your output values to be a certain format, yield a string in that format.

Perhaps something like this?

print "%04.0f" % (900)     # prints 0900