[Python-Dev] PEP 418 is too divisive and confusing and should be postponed

[Ethan Furman]

Cameron Simpson wrote:
> On 04Apr2012 22:23, PJ Eby <pje at telecommunity.com> wrote:
> | On Apr 4, 2012 7:28 PM, "Victor Stinner" <victor.stinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> | > More details why it's hard to define such function and why I dropped
> | > it from the PEP.
> | >
> | > If someone wants to propose again such function ("monotonic or
> | > fallback to system" clock), two issues should be solved:
> | >
> | >  - name of the function
> | >  - description of the function
> | 
> | Maybe I missed it, but did anyone ever give a reason why the fallback
> | couldn't be to Steven D'Aprano's monotonic wrapper algorithm over the
> | system clock?  (Given a suitable minimum delta.)  That function appeared to
> | me to provide a sufficiently monotonic clock for timeout purposes, if
> | nothing else.
> 
> It was pointed out (by Nick Coglan I think?) that if the system clock
> stepped backwards then a timeout would be extended by at least that
> long. For example, code that waited (by polling the synthetic clock)
> for 1s could easily wait an hour if the system clock stepped back that
> far. Probaby undesirable.

Steven D'Aprano's synthetic clock is able to partially avoid that 
situation -- worst case is a timeout of double what you asked for -- so 
10 seconds instead of 5 (which is much better than 3600!).

~Ethan~