[Datetime-SIG] PEP-0500 (Alternative datetime arithmetic) Was: PEP 495 ... is ready ...

[Guido van Rossum]

Whatever. :-)

On Tue, Aug 18, 2015 at 4:42 PM, Alexander Belopolsky <
alexander.belopolsky at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> On Tue, Aug 18, 2015 at 7:12 PM, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org>
> wrote:
>
>>
>>> [Guido van Rossum]
>>>
>>>> Similar for adding a datetime and a timedelta. Optimizing this should
>>>> be  IMO the only question is how should a datetime object choose between
>>>> classic arithmetic[1] and timeline arithmetic. My proposal here is to make
>>>> that a boolean property of the tzinfo object -- we could either use a
>>>> marker subclass or an attribute whose absence implies classic arithmetic.
>>>>
>>>
>>> With this proposal, we will need something like this:
>>>
>>> def __sub__(self, other):
>>>     if self.tzinfo is not None and self.tzinfo.strict:
>>>         self_offset = self.utcoffset()
>>>         other_offset = other.utcoffset()
>>>         naive_self = self.replace(tzinfo=None)
>>>         naive_other = other.replace(tzinfo=None)
>>>         return naive_self - self_offset - naive_other + other_offset
>>>     # old logic
>>>
>>> So we need to create six intermediate Python objects just to do the
>>> math.  On top of that, we need the utcoffset() method which is a pain to
>>> write in C, so we will wrap our optimized dst() function and compute
>>> utcoffset() as dst(t) + timedelta(hours=-5), creating four more
>>> intermediate Python objects.  At the end of the day, I will not be
>>> surprised if aware datetime subtraction is 10x slower than naive and every
>>> Python textbook recommends to avoid doing arithmetic with aware datetime
>>> objects.
>>>
>>>
>> I doubt it. Most textbooks aren't that concerned with saving a few
>> cycles. (Do most Python textbooks even discuss the cost of object creation
>> or function calls?) Anyways, wouldn't PEP 500 be even slower?
>>
>
> I don't think so.  We can implement PEP 500 as a C equivalent of
>
> def __sub__(self, other):
>     try:
>         try:
>            return self.tzinfo.__datetime_diff__(self, other)
>         except TypeError: # assume other is a timedelta
>            return self.tzinfo.__datetime_sub__(self, other)
>     except AttributeError: # assume missing PDDM
>         pass
>     # old logic
>
> and __datetime_diff__ / __datetime_sub__ may be even faster than a single
> timedelta - timedelta operation because no timezone would support a time
> span of more than a century or two and can do even microsecond-precision
> calculations in machine integers.
>
> Granted, most timezone implementations will just implement .utcoffset()
> and inherit the slow __datetime_sub/diff__ implementations from tzstrict,
> but users who care about a few simple timezones will have an option to
> optimize those.
>



-- 
--Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)
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