[Python-Dev] PEP 410 (Decimal timestamp): the implementation is ready for a review (original) (raw)

Gregory P. Smith greg at krypto.org
Wed Feb 15 02:10:20 CET 2012

On Tue, Feb 14, 2012 at 2:29 PM, Barry Warsaw <barry at python.org> wrote:

I think I will just state my reasoning one last time and then leave it to the BDFL or BDFOP to make the final decision.

Victor on IRC says that there is not much difference between Decimal and timedelta, and this may be true from an implementation point of view.  >From a cognitive point of view, I think they're miles apart.  Ultimately, I wish ints and floats weren't used for time-y things, and only datetimes (for values with well-defined starting points, including the epoch) and timedeltas (for values with no starting point) were used. We obviously can't eliminate the APIs that return and accept ints and floats, most of which we inherited from C, but we can avoid making it worse by extended them to also accept Decimals.  I think it would be valuable work to correct any deficiencies in datetimes and timedeltas so that they can be used in all time-y APIs, with whatever resolution is necessary. My primary concern with the PEP is adding to users confusion when they have to handle (at least) 5 different types[*] that represent time in Python.

+1

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