Imagine if your favorite YouTube video displayed a publication date like . Dates in this format require mental effort to understand. Have you ever misunderstood reading such dates by misjudging the year or month, or being off 2 hours due to the 24-hour format? This article will show you how to shorten standard date/time formats to or . It would be hard to argue that this method isn't superior. 2017-10-07-14:55:09 5 years ago Just now ChatGPT Assistance I wrote this Python 3 script as a learning exercise. I employed ChatGPT to help with not only the programming but also the crafting of this article. I was surprised at how useful it was. (ChatGPT is a natural language processing tool driven by AI technology). ChatGPT seemed happy to write the introduction and the conclusion for this article. When I asked ChatGPT to write the entire article it replied:
" "
Oddly, it didn't complain when I requested additional paragraphs - which made me laugh. It turned out I had to write a lot of the article from scratch. I'm sorry that goes beyond my current capabilities. The Solution Python will format the date to more readable formats like - a whopping 25 characters long. That helps a little bit with readability.  This article will show you how to print dates as: or . If less than a minute ago then will be printed. This is the same format that YouTube uses for time-stamping content. January 30, 2022 14:55:09 1 year ago 1 month ago Just now Function Breakdown The Python script consists of three main functions: takes a date string as input and returns the difference between that date and the current time as a object. calculate_time_difference(date_input) datetime.timedelta converts the object into a human-readable string showing how much time has passed since the input date. This function work by looping through the using loop, starting with the largest (year) and checking with the , if it's greater than or equal to this unit it returns the string with the number of and , and then break out of the loop. The function also includes a check for returning if the time difference is less than a minute. convert_time_difference_to_string(time_difference) timedelta time_units for time_unit current time_difference unit time_units Just now combines the first two functions and handles any errors that might occur, such as invalid date formats or dates in the future. get_how_long_ago(date_input) You can change the date format of to suit your needs. %Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S The last part of the script prints out examples of dates processed by . I've used to generate some of the examples. Cases for invalid dates are also provided. get_how_long_ago now() Full Script https://gist.github.com/Rob-McCormack/9fe570122fb6fadb5de0406a7bc9844d You can customize this script to your own needs. For mobile devices,  YouTube will often abbreviate to . If you prefer that, simply change the to and comment out the test for pluralization as shown: 1 year ago 1y ago year y if num_units > 1:
    time_string += 's' Going Further Dates in Tables It may be useful when presenting dates in a table to use the formatting. For example, compare the presentation of sample data sorted by field: how long ago Last_Visit -------------------------------------
   ID   Dog Name         Last Visit
    1   Bella-boy       2023-01-08        
    3   Charlie         2022-07-01       
    2   Greta           2018-10-10 Could be presented like this: -------------------------------------
   ID   Dog Name         Last Visit
    1   Bella-boy       3 days ago       
    3   Charlie         6 months ago       
    2   Greta           4 years ago Provide Both Types of Formats YouTube will first present you with but if you click or hover over that text, the exact date will be displayed, . The function could return a containing both formats. This may be a nice feature to consider in your programs that involve dates. 5 years ago Oct 6, 2017 tuple Conclusion While this script provides a straightforward and effective solution for converting date strings into a more human-readable format. You may want to consider using the Python package for even more advanced formatting options. Docs can be found . humanize here I hope you enjoy playing around with this technique in your projects.

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