Re: encode-time vs decode-time

[Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org>]

Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu> writes:

> Lars Ingebrigtsen wrote:
>> I thought it would be good to introduce a new function, say
>> `get-current-time', that could have our new signature.  We'd then
>> deprecate `current-time'
>
> It's not just current-time; it's also encode-time, file-attributes,
> directory-files-and-attributes, visited-file-modtime,
> current-idle-time, process-attributes, get-internal-run-time,
> make-frame-visible, time-add, time-subtract, and no doubt other
> primitives written in C that make Lisp timestamps visible to user
> code, along with the many functions written in Lisp (e.g.,
> time-since) that call these primitives and give Lisp timestamps to
> users.

Yeah, that's true, so introducing a new function here wouldn't help.

But I think that having these functions return something that doesn't
have the second spec in car/cadr is going to break a lot of people's
out-of-tree code.  So my feeling is that your plan isn't feasible, and
we'll have to live with these functions returning encoded time on the
current form forever.

Which I think is OK, although your new format is more elegant.

-- 
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   bloggy blog: http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no