[Python-ideas] Proposal: making __str__ count in time's class

[Eric V. Smith]

On 3/8/2017 11:01 AM, Francesco Franchina wrote:
> Hello everyone,
> 
> I'm shortly writing to you about a reflection I lately made upon the 
> current functioning of __str__ for the time's class.
> 
> Before expressing my thought and proposal, I want to make sure we all 
> agree on a simple and clear fact:
> the __str__ magic method is used to give a literal and human-readable 
> representation to the object (unlike __repr__).
> 
> Generally this is true across the python panorama. It's not true for the 
> time class, for example.
> /
>  >>> import time
>  >>> a = time.localtime()
>  >>> a.__str__()
> 'time.struct_time(tm_year=2017, tm_mon=3, tm_mday=8, tm_hour=16, 
> tm_min=6, tm_sec=16, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=67, tm_isdst=0)'/
> 
> Well, don't get me wrong: the main aim of the __str__ method has been 
> accomplished but, imho, not in the most pythonic way.
> 
> I just wanted to ask you: what do you think about re-writing the __str__ 
> of the time class so it would return something like
> ISO 8601 [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601 
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601>] format? Wouldn't it be more 
> meaningful? Especially in the JS-everywhere-era
> it could be more more productive.
> 
> 
> *TL;DR*
> __str__ for dates should return a human-readable date format (eg: 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601 
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601>)
> 
> 
> I'm waiting for your opinions.
> Thank you for your time and ideas!

I don't think we can change __str__ at this point, but I'd support 
adding __format__ to make this easier to control. Presumably it would 
just call strftime.

Eric.