unsupported operand type(s) for -: 'str' and 'datetime.datetime'

python string for-loop types operands
Kenneth Ogden picture Kenneth Ogden · Oct 18, 2015 · Viewed 14.8k times · Source

I'm trying to write a Python script to count down to my next birthday. Unfortunately, I keep getting this error message stating

unsupported operand type(s) for -: 'str' and 'datetime.datetime'

Any help would be appreciated. Here's my code:

import datetime

birthday = input('Please enter your birthday(mm/dd/yyyy): ')
birthdate = datetime.datetime.strptime(birthday,'%m/%d/%Y').date()

currentDate = datetime.datetime.today()

days = birthday - currentDate
print(days)

Answer

Evan Snapp picture Evan Snapp · Oct 23, 2018

You need to use birthdate as a datetime object, and use it instead of birthday.

birthdate = datetime.datetime.strptime(birthday,'%m/%d/%Y')
currentDate = datetime.datetime.today()

days = birthdate - currentDate

Related questions

Reverse a string without using reversed() or [::-1]?

I came across a strange Codecademy exercise that required a function that would take a string as input and return it in reverse order. The only problem was you could not use the reversed method or the common answer here …

Read More
Does Python have a string 'contains' substring method?

I'm looking for a string.contains or string.indexof method in Python. I want to do: if not somestring.contains("blah"): continue

Read More
How to read a file line-by-line into a list?

How do I read every line of a file in Python and store each line as an element in a list? I want to read the file line by line and append each line to the end of the list.

Read More