[Python-Dev] Negative timedelta strings (original) (raw)

Steven D'Aprano steve at pearwood.info
Fri Mar 28 12:03:42 CET 2014


There's a furious discussion going on at the python-list mailing list, about negative timedelta strings:

py> str(timedelta(0, -1)) '-1 day, 23:59:59'

This is documented. It's even documented as being "somewhat unusual". I found a tracker item for it, back in July 2010:

http://bugs.python.org/issue9430

and that refers back to a discussion on #python-dev, but (as far as I know) that's not archived anywhere. I had a look on the python-dev mailing list around that time, and couldn't find anything.

Does anyone remember the rationale for this behaviour? Is it open to debate or is it now cast in stone? (Personally, I'm not looking to reopen the debate, and if I did, it would be on python-ideas.) Any links to the earlier discussion would be helpful.

Thanks,

-- Steve



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