[Python-Dev] time functions

[M.-A. Lemburg]

Thomas Wouters wrote:
> 
> Maybe this is a dead and buried subject, but I'm going to try anyway, since
> everyone's been in such a wonderful 'lets fix ugly but harmless nits' mood
> lately :)
> 
> Why do we need the following atrocity <wink>:
> 
>   timestr = time.strftime("<format>", time.localtime(time.time()))
> 
> To do the simple task of 'date +<format>' ?  I never really understood why
> there isn't a way to get a timetuple directly from C, rather than converting
> a float that we got from C a bytecode before, even though the higher level
> almost always deals with timetuples. How about making the float-to-tuple
> functions (time.localtime, time.gmtime) accept 0 arguments as well, and
> defaulting to time.time() in that case ? Even better, how about doing the
> same for the other functions, too ? (where it makes sense, of course :)
> 
> Actually, I'll split it up in three proposals:
> 
> - Making the time in time.strftime default to 'now', so that the above
>   becomes the ever so slightly confusing:
> 
>   timestr = time.strftime("<format>")
>   (confusing because it looks a bit like a regexp constructor...)
> 
> - Making the time in time.asctime and time.ctime optional, defaulting to
>   'now', so you can just call 'time.ctime()' without having to pass
>   time.time() (which are about half the calls in my own code :)
> 
> - Making the time in time.localtime and time.gmtime default to 'now'.
> 
> I'm 0/+1/+1 myself :)

+1 all the way -- though these days I tend not to use the
time module anymore. mxDateTime already does everything I want
and there date/time values are objects rather than Python integers
or tuples... ok, I'm just showing opff a little :)

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
______________________________________________________________________
Company:                                        http://www.egenix.com/
Consulting:                                    http://www.lemburg.com/
Python Pages:                           http://www.lemburg.com/python/