[Python-ideas] Date/time literals

[Chris Rebert]

On Sun, May 30, 2010 at 4:06 AM, Marcos Bonci <marcos.bonci at gmail.com> wrote:
>> It's very nice of you to attribute such a great post to me, but
>> I just linked to it. I'm not the author of any of the resources
>> I linked to.
>
> Oops, lack-of-sleep in action!.. Being myself an example of the
> inattentive guy I was talking about, I guess...
>
>> One of the issues from what I understand is that you pretty much need
>> to be a specialist in the time/date domain (or have one available at
>> all times) to get this stuff right. I'm guessing the Python community
>> doesn't have any involved/available, least of which at the core level.
>>
>> Furthermore if you want to see what's usually considered a
>> best-of-breed in the java world, look not at the standard library but
>> at joda time [1]. In fact, with Java 7 the current Date/Calendar API
>> should be replaced by one strongly inspired by Joda (and created by
>> its author) and influenced by a few other APIs of the Java world. See
>> JSR 310 for details [2], though note that the inclusion in Java 7
>> apparently isn't certain yet due to delays in the JSR 310 process [3].
>>
>> For a (probably long outdated) overview of what JSR 310 would provide,
>> see [4]
>>
>> [1] http://joda-time.sourceforge.net/
>> [2] http://jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=310
>> [3] http://tech.puredanger.com/java7
>> [4]
>> http://today.java.net/pub/a/today/2008/09/18/jsr-310-new-java-date-time-api.html
>
> Since it's all open source stuff, shouldn't it be possible to just
> "clone" most of it?
> Or is there some Java-specific thing that makes it hard to translate?

Doubtful, but anyhow, I hear mxDateTime
(http://www.egenix.com/products/python/mxBase/mxDateTime/ ) is the
current and extant Python gold standard. Not quite as nimble as Joda
(though not many applications need to deal with e.g. Coptic dates
anyway), but still a significant improvement over `datetime`.

Cheers,
Chris
--
http://blog.rebertia.com