[Python-Dev] PEP 418: rename time.monotonic() to time.steady()?

[Antoine Pitrou]

On Wed, 4 Apr 2012 17:30:26 +0200
Lennart Regebro <regebro at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Copy of a more recent Guido's email:
> > http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2012-March/118322.html
> > "Anyway, the more I think about it, the more I believe these functions
> > should have very loose guarantees, and instead just cater to common
> > use cases -- availability of a timer with minimal fuss is usually more
> > important than the guarantees. So forget the idea about one version
> > that falls back to time.time() and another that doesn't -- just always
> > fall back to time.time(), which is (almost) always better than
> > failing.
> 
> I disagree with this, mainly for the reason that there isn't any good
> names for these functions. "hopefully_monotonic()" doesn't really cut
> it for me. :-)

monotonic(fallback=False) doesn't look horrible to me (assuming a
default value of False for the `fallback` parameter).

> I also don't see how it's hard to guarantee that monotonic() is monotonic.

I think we are speaking about a system-wide monotonic clock (i.e., you
can compare values between processes). Otherwise it's probably quite
easy indeed.

Regards

Antoine.