On Tue, Mar 18, 2014 at 2:49 PM, Sankarshan Mudkavi <smudkavi@uwaterloo.ca>wrote:
It's been a while since the last datetime and timezones discussion thread was visited (linked below):
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.python.numeric.general/53805
It looks like the best approach to follow is the UTC only approach in the linked thread with an optional flag to indicate the timezone (to avoid confusing applications where they don't expect any timezone info). Since this is slightly more useful than having just a naive datetime64 package and would be open to extension if required, it's probably the best way to start improving the datetime64 library.
IIUC, I agree -- which is why we need a NEP to specify the details. Thank you for stepping up! If we do wish to have full timezone support it would very likely lead to
performance drops (as reasoned in the thread) and we would need to have a dedicated, maintained tzinfo package, at which point it would make much more sense to just incorporate the pytz library.
yup -- there is the option of doing what the stdlib datetime does -- provide a hook to incorporate timezone,s but don't provide an implementation, unless that is a low-level hook that must be implemented in C, it's going to be slow -- slow enough that you might as well use a list of stdlib datetimes.... Also, this has gone far to long without getting fixed -- we need something simple to implement more than anything else.
I would like to start writing a NEP for this followed by implementation, however I'm not sure what the format etc. is, could someone direct me to a page where this information is provided?
I don't know that there is such a thing, but you'll find the existing NEPS here: https://github.com/numpy/numpy/tree/master/doc/neps I'd grab one and follow the format.
Please let me know if there are any ideas, comments etc.
Thanks again -- I look forward to seeing it written up, -- I'm sure to have something to say then! -Chris -- Christopher Barker, Ph.D. Oceanographer Emergency Response Division NOAA/NOS/OR&R (206) 526-6959 voice 7600 Sand Point Way NE (206) 526-6329 fax Seattle, WA 98115 (206) 526-6317 main reception Chris.Barker@noaa.gov