multistep comparison test python

Question

I wanna implement a class overloading and conclude if an event with a given point of time for example 12:59:50 happens before another event so the output is true or false, just a simple comparison test. I implemented it, as you can see, but, i'm pretty much sure this is not the most pythonic or better to say, objected oriented approach to carry out the tasks. I'm new to python so is there any improvement out there ?

Thanks

def __lt__(self, other):
    if self.hour  < other.hour:
       return True 

    elif (self.hour == other.hour) and (self.minute < other.minute):             
        return True

    elif (self.hour == other.hour) and (self.minute == other.minute) and (self.second < other.second):            
        return True

    else:            
        return False

you could use `datetime` – Thomas Kühn Jul 14 '17 at 15:44 — Thomas Kühn, Jul 14 '17 at 15:44

chepner · Accepted Answer · 2017-07-14T15:55:19.517

1

Tuples (and other sequences) already perform the type of lexicographic comparison you are implementing:

def __lt__(self, other):
    return (self.hour, self.minute, self.second) < (other.hour, other.minute, other.second)

The operator module can clean that up a little:

from operator import attrgetter

def __lt__(self, other):
    hms = attrgetter("hour", "minute", "second")
    return hms(self) < hms(other)

edited Jul 14 '17 at 15:55

answered Jul 14 '17 at 15:44

chepner

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multistep comparison test python

1 Answers1