python: compare dates

An easy way to compare dates is to use comparison operators like <, >, <=, >=, != etc.

Case study:

I have a configuration file (text) including effective_date, and I need to compare if today is later than effective_date, if yes, then I need to perform some checking;
otherwise nothing need to be done.

""" extract effective_date from configuration file 
    line is obtained from readline() after open the 
    configuration file
"""
(param1,param2,effective_date) = line.strip().split(',')

"" use list comprehension to extract year,month,day
 to build a datetime.date type, """
year,month,day = [int(x) for x in effective_date.split('-')]
date_obj = datetime.date(year,month,day) #datetime.date type

today = datetime.date.today()

if today >= date_obj:
    """ do something here """

datetime.datetime type can also be compared in the same way, just make sure the compared objects have the same type.