[Python-Dev] proposal: add basic time type to the standard library

[Guido van Rossum]

>     http://effbot.org/ideas/time-type.htm
> 
> I can produce PEP and patch if necessary.

Yes, a PEP, please!  Jim Fulton has been asking for this for a long
time too.  His main requirement is that timestamp objects are small,
both in memory and as pickles, because Zope keeps a lot of these
around.  They are currently represented either as long ints (with a
little under 64 bits) or as 8-byte strings.  A dedicated timestamp
object could be smaller than that.

Your idea of a base type (which presumably standarizes at least one
form of representation) sounds like a breakthrough that can help
satisfy different other needs.

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