Timestamp with microseconds and nanoseconds resolution

[Dmitrii I.]

As I understand, Julia does not have native type for microsecond and nanosecond timestamps.

1) Why is that?
2) Are there any plans to include/extend current types dealing with time in near future?

I am not interested in workarounds.

[Kevin Squire]

Hi Dmitrii,

As I understand, Julia does not have native type for microsecond and nanosecond timestamps.

1) Why is that?

Most likely because no one who uses Julia has needed it enough to implement it.  Would you be willing to try?

 

2) Are there any plans to include/extend current types dealing with time in near future?

Expanding on my answer to 1: 

Julia is young, and while core developers do communicate with each other and share their ideas about goals for the next release or two, AFAIK, the main places you'll find those ideas are in issues the julialang github repository.  Additional non-core functionality is added in packages by individuals or groups who need it.  At this point, that's about as formal as it gets. 

So a better way to phrase this question would be to ask if anyone is doing anything which needs this functionality, and have they implemented anything.  For example, there are individuals who have developed packages that interact with external data acquisition boards (https://github.com/JaneliaSciComp/NIDAQ.jl), who might have need for and/or have developed such functionality (I don't know).

One additional note: Julia is flexible enough that adding "native" types is possible, even in packages (see, e.g., the DataArrays package).  Depending on the type, it may (or may not) be tedious to do so, but it's definitely possible, and the resulting type can be just as performant as any other native type.  

Cheers!

   Kevin

[Stefan Karpinski]

Jacob Quinn is the person who can address this best, but my understanding is that while the standard time types don't have that kind of precision, the generic time framework makes it easy to add new time types with whatever precision you require. Not sure whether you consider that a workaround, but that's the deal.

[Jacob Quinn]

Yes, I've been meaning to respond here. I've looked into finer-grained resolutions and they would indeed fit well into the Dates module framework (part of why things were designed the way they were). It wouldn't be too hard to whip up a nano-second TimeType, probably take me a few days. Unfortunately, I won't have a few spare days on me until the holidays and then it might be hit or miss plus juggling other coding priorities. Happy to advise any willing soul if someone wants to take a gander. I've imagined something like the following to get started:

immutable Nanosecond <: Period

    value::Int64

end

immutable NanoTime <: TimeType

    dt::DateTime

    nano::Nanosecond

end

# define NanoTime (or whatever you want to call it) constructors. This might be a little tricky, but you could reuse the DateTime constructor code to make it easier: https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/blob/master/base/dates/types.jl

# define the same Period interface methods for Nanosecond like in https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/blob/master/base/dates/periods.jl

# define TimeType interface methods: see https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/blob/master/base/dates/accessors.jl, https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/blob/master/base/dates/arithmetic.jl, https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/blob/master/base/dates/conversions.jl, and https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/blob/master/base/dates/query.jl