Question

I have encountered this problem today and I don’t have an explanation for it.

I have a Python datetime object:

dt = datetime.datetime(2012, 3, 31, 18, 30, 48, tzinfo=<FixedOffset '-04:00'>)

which, to my understanding is 18:30 in a time zone offset from UTC by 4 hours.
I then tried to convert it to timestamp like so:

epo = time.mktime(dt.timetuple()) and get back 1333247448.0.

However, when I try to convert it back to make sure it’s correct using date

time.datetime.fromtimestring(epo), 

I get back

datetime.datetime(2012, 3, 31, 19, 30, 48)

Notice that time is 19 not 18.

Can anybody tell me why it’s doing that?

Answer 1

Try using

time.localtime(epo) 

instead of

time.datetime.fromtimestring(epo)