The Ruby Way: Solutions and Techniques in Ruby Programming, Second Edition

7.6. Converting Between Seconds and Larger Units

Sometimes we want to take a number of seconds and convert to days, hours, minutes, and seconds. This following routine will do just that:

def sec2dhms(secs)
  time = secs.round          # Get rid of microseconds
  sec = time % 60            # Extract seconds
  time /= 60                 # Get rid of seconds
  mins = time % 60           # Extract minutes
  time /= 60                 # Get rid of minutes
  hrs = time % 24            # Extract hours
  time /= 24                 # Get rid of hours
  days = time                # Days (final remainder)
  [days, hrs, mins, sec]     # Return array [d,h,m,s]
end

t = sec2dhms(1000000)        # A million seconds is...

puts "#{t[0]} days,"         # 11 days,
puts "#{t[1]} hours,"        # 13 hours,
puts "#{t[2]} minutes,"      # 46 minutes,
puts " and #{t[3]} seconds." # and 40 seconds.

We could, of course, ...