[Python-Dev] Status on PEP-431 Timezones

[Tim Peters]

[Mark Lawrence <breamoreboy at yahoo.co.uk>]
> To me a day is precisely 24 hours, no more, no less.  I have no interest in
> messing about with daylight savings of 30 minutes, one hour, two hours or
> any other variant that I've not heard about.
>
> In my mission critical code, which I use to predict my cashflow, I use code
> such as.
>
> timedelta(days=14)
>
> Is somebody now going to tell me that this isn't actually two weeks?

Precisely define what "two weeks" means, and then someone can answer.

The timedelta in question represents precisely 14 24-hours days, and
ignores the possibility that some day in there may suffer a leap
second.

If you add that timedelta to a datetime object, the result may not be
exactly 14*24 hours in the future as measured by civil time (which
includes things like DST transitions).  The result will have the same
local time on the same day of the week two weeks forward.  For
example, if you started with Monday the 6th at 3:45pm, the result will
be Monday the 20th at 3:45;pm.  Period.  The time zone (if any is
attached) is wholly ignored throughout.  If a DST transition occurs
across that period, then it's impossible to say how far removed (as
measured by. say, an independent stopwatch) Monday the 20th at 3:45pm
is from Monday the 6th at 3:45pm without also knowing the month, the
year, and the exact local time zone rules in effect across the period.

It remains unclear to me which of those outcomes _you_ consider to be
"actually 14 days".  But my bet is that you like what Python already
does here (because "tz-naive arithmetic" is exactly what _I_ want in
all my financial code).