[Python-Dev] datetime nanosecond support. list of proposals (original) (raw)

Vincenzo Ampolo vincenzo.ampolo at gmail.com
Sat Jul 28 10:50:20 CEST 2012

Hi all again,

I've been quite busy these days and I collected all the suggestions about the proposal. Here is a small summary:

Christian Heimes: two numbers: Julian Day Number (Rata Die) 32 bit signed integer nanoseconds in a day 64 bit signed or unsigned integer pro: fix 2038 bug cons: hard conversion to Gregorian calendar

Charles Cazabon: use tai64/tai64n/tai64na pro: well defined libraries available cons: ?

As ways to implement the idea there are these advices:

Nick Coghlan: define common API based on datetime maybe use TAI fork the pure Python version of datetime, then fork the C implementation to make PyPI version faster, then make a PEP

Guido van Rossum: must do: clever backward compatibility use fewer bits as possible stdlib is not the right place for first implementation

Since I'm not a big expert of calendars and date representation I'm going to study the Julian Calendar and the TAI representation. As a first read from Wikipedia the TAI solution looks very promising.

For the ways to implement the idea I also believe that It's better to have a pure python implementation (so It can be used on python 2.x and distributed on PyPI) and then a Python 3.x C implementation and a PEP submission.

I'm open to any other idea/advice. If there are other people that would like to implement this with me, just write me a mail.

Thank you.

Best Regards,

Vincenzo Ampolo http://vincenzo-ampolo.net http://goshawknest.wordpress.com

More information about the Python-Dev mailing list