[Python-Dev] os.path.getmtime on Windows

[Tim Peters]

[Christian Tismer]
> Hi Python developers,
>
> today I got a complaint from the python.de IRC channel
> about os.path.getmtime and time zone.
>
> How to produce the weird behavior:
>
> 1. create a file
> 2. get it's os.path.getmtime()
> 3. change your time zone
> 4. get os.path.getmtime again
>
> compare - the time stamps are different.
> Change the time zone back, and they are identical, again.
>
> I was not ableto produce an identity, neither by time.gmtime
> nor by time.localtime, so I'm a bit confused.
>
> I checked the sources, and this is probably not a Python
> problem. It uses the suggested win32 function properly.
> But the win32 documentation seems to have no hints about this.
>
> I assumend the value would be in UTC, but it is obviously not.

See:

    http://www.codeproject.com/datetime/dstbugs.asp

and just be grateful you didn't bump into the additional mysteries MS
added around "daylight time" switches.

> Is there a way to circumvent this problem, or am I missing something?
> If this is not the expected behavior, then it might make sense
> to find a patch.

While I love the article linked to above, I've never had the will to
force myself to read it all the way to the end ;-)