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

[Guido van Rossum]

[Anders J. Munch]
> If ctime/mtime/atime were to return datetime objects, that would
> pretty much have to be UTC to not lose information in the DST
> transition.  I doubt that's what Walter wanted though, as that would
> leave users with the job of converting from UTC datetime to local
> datetime; - unless perhaps I've overlooked a convenient UTC->local
> conversion method?

To be honest, I'm not sure what the point would be of returning
datetime objects for this use case. A time.time()-like value seems
just fine to me. The quest for a single representation of time (as
expressed by Walter's "We should have one uniform way of representing
time in Python") is IMO a mistake; there are too many different use
cases. Note that datetime intentionally doesn't handle things like
leap seconds and alternate calendars. Those things are very
specialized applications and deserve to be handled by
application-specific code.

-- 
--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)