[Python-Dev] PEP 410 (Decimal timestamp): the implementation is ready for a review

[Guido van Rossum]

On Wed, Feb 15, 2012 at 8:47 AM, Antoine Pitrou <solipsis at pitrou.net> wrote:
> On Wed, 15 Feb 2012 08:39:45 -0800
> Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
>>
>> What purpose is there to recording timestamps in nanoseconds? For
>> clocks that start when the process starts running, float *is*
>> (basically) good enough. For measuring e.g. file access times, there
>> is no way that the actual time is know with anything like that
>> precision (even if it is *recorded* as a number of milliseconds --
>> that's a different issue).
>
> The number one use case, as far as I understand, is to have
> bit-identical file modification timestamps where it can matter.

So that can be solved by adding extra fields st_{a,c,m}time_ns and an
extra os.utime_ns() call. Only the rare tool for making 100% faithful
backups of filesystems and the like would care.

-- 
--Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)