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

[Walter Dörwald]

Phillip J. Eby wrote:

> 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.

I find timestamp values to be somewhat opaque. So all things being  
equal, I'd prefer datetime objects.

>>  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)

We should have one uniform way of representing time in Python. IMHO  
datetime objects are the natural choice.

Bye,
    Walter Dörwald