[Python-Dev] time functions

[Thomas Wouters]

Maybe this is a dead and buried subject, but I'm going to try anyway, since
everyone's been in such a wonderful 'lets fix ugly but harmless nits' mood
lately :)

Why do we need the following atrocity <wink>:

  timestr = time.strftime("<format>", time.localtime(time.time()))

To do the simple task of 'date +<format>' ?  I never really understood why
there isn't a way to get a timetuple directly from C, rather than converting
a float that we got from C a bytecode before, even though the higher level
almost always deals with timetuples. How about making the float-to-tuple
functions (time.localtime, time.gmtime) accept 0 arguments as well, and
defaulting to time.time() in that case ? Even better, how about doing the
same for the other functions, too ? (where it makes sense, of course :) 

Actually, I'll split it up in three proposals:

- Making the time in time.strftime default to 'now', so that the above
  becomes the ever so slightly confusing:

  timestr = time.strftime("<format>")
  (confusing because it looks a bit like a regexp constructor...)

- Making the time in time.asctime and time.ctime optional, defaulting to
  'now', so you can just call 'time.ctime()' without having to pass
  time.time() (which are about half the calls in my own code :)

- Making the time in time.localtime and time.gmtime default to 'now'.

I'm 0/+1/+1 myself :)

-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas@xs4all.net>

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