Python IRC Bot: Set variables from channel reading

Question

I'm working on a simple IRC bot and I'm trying to create a timer highlight function.

When I enter the following:

!hl 10

I want to assign 10 (or whatever might be there in it's place) as a variable called 'var_time' in minutes.

var_time= 0 #External statement

def timer_commands(nick,channel,message):
       global var_time
       if message.find("!hl", var_time )!=-1:
           ircsock.send('PRIVMSG %s :%s I will highlight you in %s minutes!\r\n' % (channel,nick, var_time))
           time.sleep(float(var_time)) #The delay here is in seconds
           ircsock.send('PRIVMSG %s :%s, You asked me %s minutes ago to highlight you.!\r\n' % (channel,nick,var_time))

I know var_time is not taking the value 10, that is precisely my question, how can I make that happen?

Here is how the function is called:

  while 1:
      ircmsg = ircsock.recv(2048) # receive data from the server
      ircmsg = ircmsg.strip('\n\r') # removing any unnecessary linebreaks.
      ircraw = ircmsg.split(' ')
      print(ircmsg) # Here we print what's coming from the server

      if ircmsg.find(' PRIVMSG ')!=-1:
         nick=ircmsg.split('!')[0][1:]
         channel=ircmsg.split(' PRIVMSG ')[-1].split(':')[0]
         timer_commands(nick,channel,ircmsg)

Thanks in advance.

Solution:

  def timer_commands(nick,channel,message):
      if ircraw[3] == ':!hl':
         var_time = float(ircraw[4])
         ircsock.send('PRIVMSG %s :I will highlight you in %s minutes!\r\n' % (channel, nick, ircraw[4]))
         time.sleep(var_time*60) #Delay in Minutes
         ircsock.send('PRIVMSG %s :%s pYou asked me %s minutes ago to highlight you.! \r\n' % (channel, nick, ircraw[4]))

Thanks Anonymous

Answer 1

try regular expressions:

>>> re.match('!hl ([0-9]+)$', '!hl 91445569').groups()[0]
'91445569'
>>> re.match('!hl ([0-9]+)$', '!hl 1').groups()[0]
'1'

or, in your code:

import re
m = re.match('!hl ([0-9]+)$', ircmsg)
if m is not None:
    var_time = int(re.groups()[0])