Find if time is between start and end time

[Gribouillis]

Assuming that the set of periods is a fixed set of non overlapping intervals and you have potentially many searches to do, it seems to me that the best solution is to use the bisect module

import bisect

period = [[1230, 1300], [1400, 1500],[900, 1000], [1530, 1800],[1930, 2100]]

# prepare two helper arrays
scale, intervals = zip(
    *sorted((end, inter) for inter in period for end in inter))
scale = list(scale)
scale.append(2401)

class NotFound(RuntimeError):
    pass

def find_interval(time):
    idx = bisect.bisect_left(scale, time)
    if not (idx % 2) and (scale[idx] != time):
        raise NotFound(time)
    return intervals[idx]

if __name__ == '__main__':
    i = find_interval(1735)
    print(i)