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

Guido van Rossum guido@python.org
Wed, 27 Feb 2002 21:39:10 -0500

Guido> Proposal for internal representation (also the basis for an Guido> efficient pickle format):

Guido> year 2 bytes, big-endian, unsigned (0 .. 65535) ... Guido> - Why is the year unsigned? So memcmp() will do the right thing Guido> for comparing dates (in the same timezone). So the earliest year it can represent is 1BC (or does year == 0 represent some other base year)?

Correct.

One of MAL's desires were that he could use the abstract interface /F defined and remain binary compatible with the current mxDateTime layout. Will your layout work for him?

My layout is incompatible with that of mxDateTime, but this is not supposed to be /F's abstract interface -- this is supposed to be one implementation of it, mxDateTime can be another.

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