On Thu, 10 Feb 2022 at 15:21, Aman Pandey <amanpandey5...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Hello Stephen, I think you misunderstood it. we are not talking about > modifying the existing built-in function range rather adding a new function > in datetime module that will generate the date and time between two periods. > if we add a function like that in the datetime module the code will be > exactly like the one you gave. > Christopher was mentioning that he visualizes that function in the datetime > module as something similar in syntax and execution like the built-in range > function. > > what do you think if we add some function like that in datetime module > wouldn't it be helpful?
I think something like this might occasionally be helpful. However, for simple examples, it's pretty easy to write your own, sufficiently so that people would expect more of a stdlib version. And understanding the edge cases, correctly handling them, and designing an API which makes the function easy to use while still having the power to cover everyone's use cases, is a *lot* harder. It's that part of the problem that is receiving the pushback here. To give a concrete example, consider a range with a start of 1:30am on a particular day, and a step of 1 day. If the range extends over a DST change, then there's one day in the range where either there are no valid 1:30am times, or there are *two*, equally valid 1:30am times (depending on whether the clock is "going forwards" or "going backwards"). What should the stdlib function do in this case? How should the function deal with the fact that people can legitimately expect different behaviours (for some applications "raise an exception" could be the only safe option, for others, "use the nearest valid time" might be)? Having flags that pick between different behaviours scales badly, and is typically not a good design. For your own code, you can write the behaviour that works best for you, and for your application. For the stdlib, the behaviour has to address the needs of *everyone*. My feeling is that the complexity of a "does the right thing for everyone" stdlib implementation would outweigh any benefit gained from not having to write your own short function, tailored to your particular needs. Paul _______________________________________________ Python-ideas mailing list -- python-ideas@python.org To unsubscribe send an email to python-ideas-le...@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman3/lists/python-ideas.python.org/ Message archived at https://mail.python.org/archives/list/python-ideas@python.org/message/5BNPSKGEJ6WE2GBYO4FGG5NMXXRJHJ7S/ Code of Conduct: http://python.org/psf/codeofconduct/
