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I'm trying to convert seconds to milliseconds (or microseconds) without dividing by 1,000 or 1,000,000. The reason I'm doing it is because I don't want the decimal point to be shown. Is there a way of showing milliseconds or microseconds without the decimal point and without dividing by 1,000 or 1,000,000?

Here's my code with method execution timing: 

from random import randint list = [1]*1000 for i in range (1, 1000): list[i] = randint(1,100) def insertion(list): for index in range(1,len(list)): value = list[index] i = index - 1 while i>=0 and (value < list[i]): list[i+1] = list[i] list[i] = value i = i - 1 def test(): start = time.clock() insertion(list) elapsed = (time.clock() - start) print "Time taken for insertion = ", elapsed if __name__ == '__main__': import time test()
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    1 second is 1000 milliseconds, so you need to multiply. Commented Apr 30, 2013 at 17:40
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    To time algorithms, use the timeit module. Commented Apr 30, 2013 at 17:41
  • If the only constraint is that you don't want the decimal point to be shown, you can just print it with a format that doesn't show the decimal point. For example: print "Time taken for insertion = {:.0f}".format(elapsed). Then it doesn't matter what type you have. Commented Apr 30, 2013 at 17:50
  • And meanwhile, in Python 2.7 and earlier, if n is an int, n / 1000 is an int too (unless you use a __future__ statement). If you want to be absolutely sure, use the explicit "floordiv" operator: n // 1000 is an int even in 3.x. Commented Apr 30, 2013 at 17:52

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Sure! To convert seconds to milliseconds or microseconds, you multiply by the number of the desired divisions in a second (e.g. 1000 for milliseconds). No division needed!

If you don't want the decimal places, use round() or int() on the result.

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2 Comments

Why wouldn't you divide? 1000th of a second is millisecond, right?
@wizardo: you want to convert seconds to milliseconds. 1 second is 1000 milliseconds. 0.001 seconds is 1 millisecond. You multiply by 1000 to go from seconds to milliseconds.
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I think your question may be missing something. To convert an amount of seconds to milliseconds, you can simply multiply (not divide) by 1000.

If it's 52 seconds:

52 * 1000

This would return the integer 52000.

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