[New-bugs-announce] [issue12756] datetime.datetime.utcnow should return a UTC timestamp

[Ben Finney]

New submission from Ben Finney <ben+python at benfinney.id.au>:

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$ date -u +'%F %T %s %z'
2011-08-16 06:42:12 1313476932 +0000

$ python -c 'import sys, datetime; now = datetime.datetime.utcnow(); sys.stdout.write(now.strftime("%F %T %s %z"))'
2011-08-16 06:42:12 1313440932 
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The documentation for ‘datetime.datetime.utcnow’ says “Return a new datetime representing UTC day and time.” The resulting object should be in the UTC timezone, not a naive no-timezone value.

This results in programs specifically requesting UTC time with ‘utcnow’, but then Python treating the return value as representing local time since it is not marked with the UTC timezone.

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components: Library (Lib)
messages: 142164
nosy: Daniel.O'Connor, bignose, r.david.murray
priority: normal
severity: normal
status: open
title: datetime.datetime.utcnow should return a UTC timestamp
type: feature request
versions: Python 2.7, Python 3.2

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Python tracker <report at bugs.python.org>
<http://bugs.python.org/issue12756>
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