Microsecond support in java.time.Duration/Instant? (original) (raw)

Roger Riggs Roger.Riggs at Oracle.com
Mon Jan 22 14:25:00 UTC 2018

Hi Kurt,

In JSR 310, the thinking was that higher precision was desirable and that adding micros methods just bulked up the API without sufficient payback. At the time there were insufficient use cases to motivate the addition.  If the use is more common than previously thought it is a straightforward addition.

Regards, Roger

On 1/21/2018 9:58 PM, Kurt Alfred Kluever wrote:

Hi core-libs-dev,

At Google, we often use microsecond precision for instants/durations (probably because of historical reasons). Therefore, we have a handful of static utility functions for creating/converting java.time types and microseconds: public static Duration ofMicros(long micros) public static long toMicros(Duration duration) public static Instant ofEpochMicros(long micros) public static long toEpochMicros(Instant instant) Duration includes APIs for creating/converting to days, hours, minutes, seconds, millis, and nanos. Instant includes APIs for creating/converting to seconds and millis. Micros are noticeably absent. I'm curious how these sets of units were chosen or decided upon? I understand that the line must be drawn somewhere (or else someone may come along asking for centisecond support), but I'm curious as to the rational. Thanks!

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