Tuples are an ordered sequences of items, just like lists. The main difference between tuples and lists is that tuples cannot be changed [immutable] unlike lists which can [mutable]. There are two ways to initialize an empty tuple. You can initialize an empty tuple by having [] with no values in them. You can also initialize an empty tuple by using the Initialize a Tuple
# Way 1
emptyTuple = []tuple function.# Way 2
emptyTuple = tuple[]
This is an answer to the question "Is this a reasonable approach?" [which appears to have been ignored by all].
Summary: You may want/need to lift your gaze from making a pairwise thingy out of mdtimes to the encompassing problem [segmenting bigdata].
Detail:
The desired use of the result is expressed as:
datasegment = [x for x in bigdata if [ [x['datetime'] > tleft] and [x['datetime'] < tright]]]
which is better expressed as:
datasegment = [x for x in bigdata if tleft < x['datetime'] < tright]
Note that as that stands, it will not include any cases where the timestamp is exactly equal to one of the boundary points, so let's change it to:
datasegment = [x for x in bigdata if tleft