[Python-Dev] Store timestamps as decimal.Decimal objects

[Nick Coghlan]

On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 9:08 PM, Antoine Pitrou <solipsis at pitrou.net> wrote:
> Right, but that's not even a plausible request. Nobody wants to write a
> separate time module just to have a different return type.

I can definitely see someone doing "import hirestime as time" to avoid
having to pass a flag everywhere, though. I don't think that should be
the way *we* expose the functionality - I just think it's a possible
end user technique we should keep in mind when assessing the
alternatives.

As I said in my last reply to Victor though, I'm definitely coming
around to the point of view that supporting more than just Decimal is
overgeneralising to the detriment of the API design. As you say, if
decimal objects were a builtin type, we wouldn't even be considering
alternative high precision representations - the only discussion would
be about the details of the API for *requesting* high resolution
timestamps (and while boolean flags are ugly, I'm not sure there's
anything else that will satisfy backwards compatibility constraints).

Cheers,
Nick.

-- 
Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia