[Python-Dev] User's complaints

["Martin v. Löwis"]

skip at pobox.com wrote:
> The way I used to format dates using time.strftime does indeed no longer
> work.
> 
> Python 2.3:
> 
>     >>> import time
>     >>> time.strftime("%Y-%m-%d", (2005, 6, 4) + (0,)*6)
>     '2005-06-04'

Is there any specific reason you couldn't write

"%d-%02d-%02d" % (2005, 6, 4)

(i.e. not use strftime at all)? It seems strange to fake a time tuple
just to use that function, in particular if the time formatting should
not use any locale-specific output.

> I don't actually run into this problem as I've pretty much converted to use
> datetime in new code.  I also realize that's not documented as the way it
> should be done, but I'm fairly certain it was common usage before the
> datetime module came along.  Still, it is a bit annoying that the
> (undocumented, but I think de facto) commonly used idiom no longer works.

I guess this was caused by this change:

    /* Checks added to make sure strftime() does not crash Python by
       indexing blindly into some array for a textual representation
       by some bad index (fixes bug #897625).

       No check for year since handled in gettmarg().
    */

So this was changed in response to a bug report about a crash.


Regards,
Martin