Python Programming for Biology: Bioinformatics and Beyond

The ‘

time

’ module

The  following  are  a  few  simple  methods  from  the  time  model.  There  is  much  more

functionality  in  this  module,  and  in  the  related  datetime  module,  e.g.  for  time  string

representation, formatting and daylight savings, which is described in the standard on-line

Python documentation.

Method

(time.)

Description

ctime(secs)

Generates a human-readable string from a time represented in

seconds (since the arbitrary zero time: 00:00:00 UTC on 1 January

1970) . Defaults to the current time if no argument is specified.

sleep(secs)

Suspends the execution of the program for a given number of

seconds.

time()

Retrieves the time in seconds since the system zero time (00:00:00

UTC on 1 January 1970).