[Python-Dev] datetime nanosecond support (ctd?) (original) (raw)

Marko Rauhamaa marko at pacujo.net
Thu Dec 11 20:59:28 CET 2014


Ethan Furman <ethan at stoneleaf.us>:

On 12/11/2014 11:14 AM, Guido van Rossum wrote:

(I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't -- while computer clocks have a precision in nanoseconds, that doesn't mean they are that accurate at all (even with ntpd running). The real-world use cases deal with getting this information from other devices (network cards, GPS, particle accelerators, etc.), so it's not really a matter of cross-computer accurancy, but relative accuracy (i.e. how long did something take?).

It would be nice if it were possible to deal with high-precision epoch times and time deltas without special tricks. I have had to deal with femtosecond-precision IRL (albeit in a realtime C application, not in Python). Quad-precision floats (<URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadruple-precision_floating-point_format>) would do it for Python:

Marko



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