[Python-Dev] Adding the 'path' module (was Re: Some RFE for review)

[Phillip J. Eby]

At 09:26 PM 6/26/2005 -0400, Bob Ippolito wrote:

>On Jun 26, 2005, at 8:54 PM, Phillip J. Eby wrote:
>
>>At 12:22 AM 6/27/2005 +0200, Dörwald Walter wrote:
>>
>>>Phillip J. Eby wrote:
>>>>I'm also not keen on the fact that it makes certain things
>>>>properties whose value can change over time; i.e. ctime/mtime/atime
>>>>and
>>>>size really shouldn't be properties, but rather methods.
>>>
>>>I think ctime, mtime and atime should be (or return)
>>>datetime.datetime objects instead of integer timestamps.
>>
>>With what timezone?  I don't think that can be done portably and
>>unambiguously, so I'm -1 on that.
>
>That makes no sense, timestamps aren't any better,

Sure they are, if what you want is a timestamp.  In any case, the most 
common use case I've seen for mtime and friends is just comparing against a 
previous value, or the value on another file, so it doesn't actually matter 
most of the time what the type of the value is.


>  and datetime
>objects have no time zone set by default anyway.
>datetime.fromtimestamp(time.time()) gives you the same thing as
>datetime.now().

In which case, it's also easy enough to get a datetime if you really want 
one.  I personally would rather do that than complicate the use cases where 
a datetime isn't really needed.  (i.e. most of the time, at least in my 
experience)