Question

I have written some code where I get the modified time of a file using

os.path.getmtime('path')

which returns some number like 965465464.19234. I convert it to bytes and send it over socket. At the other end I read the socket and try to set this timestamp to another file using:

os.utime('path',(access_time, modified_time))

I ensure access_time remains the same while I try to set the modified_time received from socket. But utime expects an integer, so I truncate the number (for example: 965465464) and then things work fine.

Am I losing any thing by truncating? How can this be made better?

Answer 1

I don’t think that the problem has to do with modified_time being float or integer. The code below should work. I did everything, but send it over the wire.

import os
from datetime import datetime
from calendar import timegm
import sys
st_info = os.stat('foo.py')
st_info.st_atime #acces time
st_info.st_mtime #modified time
mtime = st_info.st_mtime
atime = st_info.st_atime
# send over the wire
os.utime('foo.py', (atime, mtime))

As you can see os.utime can do just fine with floats.

mtime

Out[15]: 1322517342.0

In [16]: type(mtime)

Out[16]: float