[Datetime-SIG] Strict Invalid Time Checking: an idea for another PEP

[Carl Meyer]

On 08/25/2015 05:16 PM, Alexander Belopolsky wrote:
> Here is an outline of a "Strict Invalid Time Checking" that might work:
> the values of datetime.fold attribute will be restricted to 0 and 1, but
> the datetime constructor will accept None as a possible value of the
> fold argument.  The datetime constructor that receives fold=None will
> set self.fold both ways and call self.tzinfo.utcoffset(self) twice
> before returning the constructed instance.  If the values returned by
> the two utcoffset() calls match - an instance with self.fold=0 will be
> returned, if not - they will be compared and an appropriate error returned.
> 
> This design seems workable, but immediately raises a question: shouldn't
> datetime constructor get the strict=False argument instead of encoding
> it in the third value of fold?
> 
> And if we want to have datetime(..., strict=True), why not just have
> strict_datetime(...) function in your toolkit or on PyPI?  Not every
> 8-line function need to be in the standard library.
> 
> We can discuss this and other questions if someone decides to champion
> a Strict Invalid Time Checking PEP after PEP 495 is in-place.

Works for me. You've convinced me that it's a subtle enough problem to
deserve its own PEP. And since it would likely involve adding either a
new argument to some methods/constructors, or a new (invalid under PEP
495) value to the disambiguation flag, there's no sense in which it
needs to be done at the same time; PEP 495 won't restrict future options.

Carl

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