[Python-Dev] datetime module enhancements

[BJörn Lindqvist]

On 3/11/07, Steven Bethard <steven.bethard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/11/07, Christian Heimes <lists at cheimes.de> wrote:
> > I've another idea. Date and datetime objects are compared by date. The
> > date object for a given date is always smaller than the datetime for the
> > same day - even for midnight.
>
> I really don't understand what the problem is with having a date()
> behave like a proper temporal interval.  The only person complaining
> about that interpretation acknowledged that for his purposes, it would
> be better than the status quo.  And I have yet to see a use case where
> being consistent with temporal interval logic is a problem.

I do not really understand proper temporal intervals. But I am
interested what "temporal interval logic" has to say about this
problem:

def get_most_recent_articles(articles, cutoff_date):
    recent_articles = []
    for article in articles:
        if article.datetime_posted > cutoff_date:
            recent_articles.append(article)
    return recent_articles

Would temporal interval logic make it so an article with
datetime(2007, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0) be included, if cutoff_date was
date(2007, 1, 1)? What about articles with datetimes (2007, 1, 1, 0,
0, 1) and (2007, 1, 2, 0, 0, 0) respectively? I believe that "temporal
interval logic" has to include at least the last two examples in
recent_articles, otherwise it would be highly annoying.

-- 
mvh Björn