YADTR (Yet Another DateTime Rant)

[Chris Angelico]

On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 10:25 PM, Johannes Bauer <dfnsonfsduifb at gmx.de> wrote:
> And it makes it extremely error-prone to the reader:
>
>>>> str(datetime.timedelta(0, -1))
> '-1 day, 23:59:59'
>
> This looks MUCH more like "almost two days ago" than
>
> '-00:00:01'
>
> does.

It's easy when the timedelta is >-1 day. Is it as clear when it's
further negative?

In any case... what I'd suggest would be opening a tracker issue, or
discussing this on python-ideas, and seeing what core devs think of
the matter. I think that, on balance, it's probably better to show the
whole thing with the same sign; but should it be:

>>> str(datetime.timedelta(-1, -1))
'-1 day, 00:00:01'

or should the hyphen be repeated:

>>> str(datetime.timedelta(-1, -1))
'-1 day, -00:00:01'

? How does it read in a larger expression? All this bikeshedding, and
more, available gratis on python-ideas. :)

ChrisA