[Python-Dev] proposal: add basic time type to the standard library

[Jim Fulton]

Jeremy Hylton wrote:
> 
> >>>>> "TP" == Tim Peters <tim.one@comcast.net> writes:
> 
...
> Also, it may not be necessary to have a TimeStamp object in ZODB 4.
> There are three uses for the timestamp: tracking how recently an
> object was used for cache evication,

Time-stamp isn't used for this.

> providing a last modified time to
> users, and as a simple version number.

This is certainly a hack.
 
> In ZODB 4, the cache eviction may be done quite differently. 

Yup, or, with Toby Dickenson's patches, in ZODB 3. :)

> The
> version number may be a simple int.  The last mod time will not be
> provided for each object; instead, users will need to define this
> themselves if they care about it.  If they define it themselves,
> they'd probably use a DateTime object, but we'd care much less about
> how small it is.

The TimeStamp type will still be useful for storage implementations
that want compact time strings.

I could imagine al alternate implementation that conformed to the new
interface and retained the compact representation.

Jim

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