[Python-Dev] proposal: add basic time type to the standard library (original) (raw)

Guido van Rossum guido@python.org
Tue, 26 Feb 2002 16:11:34 -0500

Guido van Rossum writes: > 10pm EST has a different feel to it than one sent at 4am MET. It > should sort on UTC, but it should use the original timezone to > display the dates.

[Fred]

Sounds like a user preference, not a universal truth.

Fair enough. Even some of my well-traveled friends cannot do timezone arithmetic in their head... :-)

Is it important that the timezone is part of the date/time type, though? Is it important that it be part of the abstract base date/time?

Specific implementations should certainly be able to add support for timezones, and perhaps some hypothetical default date/time type should include it for convenience, but that doesn't tell me it's fundamental.

I guess I want it to be possible to have an implementation that keeps track of the timezone as entered.

It's true that time deltas are a nightmare when dealing with different timezones.

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