Get the highest of two string variables representing dates

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I have two variables (a and b) in the DateTime format 'YYYYMMDDTHHMMSS' (e.g. '20180108T124506'), and I would like to know how to decide which one is more recent. So essentially the highest number.

The problem is that I can't convert it to an integer using int(variable) because there's a T in the variable.

How can I circumvent this problem?

max integer python
2 Answers

There is no need to do anything. YYYYMMDDTHHMMSS format is already ordered from most to least significant; this means the native str order is equivalent to the desired "time" order.

>>> a = "20180108T124506"
>>> b = "20220108T124506"
>>> b > a
True
>>> max(a, b)
'20220108T124506'
user_53499160

You can use this,

from datetime import datetime 
a = datetime.strptime("20180108T124506","%Y%m%dT%H%M%S")
b = datetime.strptime("20220108T124506","%Y%m%dT%H%M%S")

In [11]: b > a
Out[11]: True
user_2013930
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