Re: [Datetime-SIG] PEP-431/495
[Tim]
[...] Stewart, I still don't grasp what your problem is. The only concrete example I've seen is dealing with this string:
2004-10-31 01:15 EST-05:00
where you knew "EST" meant US/Eastern, but you haven't explained exactly what you're trying to _do_ with it. If you're trying to create an aware datetime out of it in a post-PEP-495 pytz, then "the obvious" way is:
1. Create a UTC datetime out of "2004-10-31 01:15" alone. 2. Create timedelta(hours=-5) out of "-05:00" alone. 3. Subtract the result of #2 from the result of #1, to convert to UTC for real. 4. Invoke .astimezone() on the result of #3, passing pytz's spelling of "US/Eastern".
[Guido]
Funny, I would have done it this way (but the outcome should be the same):
1. Create a naive datetime out of "2004-10-31 01:15" alone. 2. Create timedelta(hours=-5) out of "-05:00" alone. 3. Subtract the result of #2 from the result of #1 to get the UTC time as a naive datetime. 4. Use .replace(tzinfo=datetime.timezone.utc) to mark the result as UTC. 5. Invoke .astimezone() on the result of #3, passing pytz's spelling of "US/Eastern".
Only #5 requires pytz (though you could use pytz.utc in #4 -- it doesn't matter).
My reason for the extra step is philosophical: the datetime created in the first step is just a (date, time) combo that *doesn't know* its timezone yet. Only after step 3 do we have the designated point in time, so then we can mark it as UTC.
Of course, since the result is the same, if Tim's version is faster that's a fine way to do it -- but IMO mine makes it clearer what's going on.
That's fine - I'm trying to get across the idea, not suggest a specific implementation, and 4 steps are one less than 5 ;-) An actual speed-conscious implementation would create the datetime with the US/Eastern timezone in my step #1 already. Classic arithmetic still gets the right result in #3 (timedelta subtraction ignores the tzinfo, except just to copy it into the result). The _point_ is that then step #4 can call the cheaper .fromutc() instead (which requires that the datetime invoking it already has the destination tzinfo). You could do the same in yours by changing your #4 to attach US/Eastern, and changing #5 to just invoke .fromutc(). It's a little cheaper to attach the destination zone in #1, though (in all, requires creating one fewer datetime object).
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Tim Peters