[Python-Dev] Questions for the PEP 418: monotonic vs steady, is_adjusted (original) (raw)

Victor Stinner victor.stinner at gmail.com
Sat Apr 14 13:16:00 CEST 2012

I prefer "steady" over "monotonic" because the steady property is what users really expect from a "monotonic" clock. A monotonic but not steady clock may be useless. "steady" is ambiguous IMO. It can only be "steady" in reference to another clock - but which one ? (real time presumably, but perhaps not, e.g. if the clock gets suspended on suspend)

Yes, real time is the reference when I say that CLOCK_MONOTONIC is steadier than CLOCK_MONOTONIC_RAW.

I agree that CLOCK_MONOTONIC is not steady from the real time reference when the system is suspended. CLOCK_BOOTTIME includes suspend time, but it was only introduced recently in Linux.

Because the "steady" name is controversal, I agree to use the "monotonic" name. I will complete the section explaning why time.monotonic() is not called steady :-)

Victor

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