title: Parse time string in python
body: <blockquote>
    <p><strong>Possible Duplicate:</strong><br>
    <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4628122/how-to-construct-a-timedelta-object-from-a-simple-string">How to construct a timedelta object from a simple string</a>  </p>
  </blockquote>
  
  
  
  <p>I have a string that is in the format <code>hours:minutes:seconds</code> but it is not a time of day but a duration. For example, <code>100:00:00</code> means <code>100 hours</code>. </p>
  
  <p>I am trying to find the time that is offset from the current time by the amount of time specified in the string. I could use regular expressions to manually pull apart the time string and convert it to seconds and add it to the floating point returned by <code>time.time()</code>, but is there a <code>time</code> function to do this?</p>
  
  <p>The <code>time.strptime()</code> function formatting seems to work on time of day/date strings and not arbitrary strings.</p>