Using mktime to convert date to seconds since epoch - omitting elements from the tuple?

[Victor Hooi]

Hi,

I'm using pysvn to checkout a specific revision based on date - pysvn will only accept a date in terms of seconds since the epoch.

I'm attempting to use time.mktime() to convert a date (e.g. "2012-02-01) to seconds since epoch.

According to the docs, mktime expects a 9-element tuple.

My question is, how should I omit elements from this tuple? And what is the expected behaviour when I do that?

For example, (zero-index), element 6 is the day of the week, and element 7 is the day in the year, out of 366 - if I specify the earlier elements, then I shouldn't really need to specify these.

However, the docs don't seem to talk much about this.

I just tried testing putting garbage numbers for element 6 and 7, whilst specifying the earlier elements:

> time.mktime((2012, 5, 5, 23, 59, 59, 23424234, 5234234 ,0 ))

It seems to have no effect what numbers I set 6 and 7 to - is that because the earlier elements are set?

How should I properly omit them? Is this all documented somewhere? What is the minimum I need to specify? And what happens to the fields I don't specify?

Cheers,
Victor