Is Python's time.time() timezone specific?

Question

Apologies for asking too basic question but I couldn\'t get it cleared after reading docs. It just seems that I am missing or have misunderstood something too basic here.

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Answer 1

time.time() returns the same value, on any machine running time.time() simultaneously, even though those machines are using different timezones.

I have two machines, one is using UTC, the other one is using UTC+7.

I run this script on both machines almost simultaneously (the UTC one is about three seconds earlier):

import time
from datetime import datetime
import pytz

print("GENERATING TIMESTAMP:")
print("                                           time.time()", int(time.time()))
print("                            datetime.now().timestamp()", int(datetime.now().timestamp()))
print("datetime.utcnow().replace(tzinfo=pytz.UTC).timestamp()", int(datetime.utcnow().replace(tzinfo=pytz.UTC).timestamp()))
print("                         datetime.utcnow().timestamp()", int(datetime.utcnow().timestamp()))

ts = datetime.utcnow().replace(tzinfo=pytz.UTC).timestamp()

print("\nGENERATING DATETIME FROM TIMESTAMP ts =", ts)
print("                         datetime.fromtimestamp(ts)", datetime.fromtimestamp(ts))
print("            datetime.fromtimestamp(ts, tz=pytz.UTC)", datetime.fromtimestamp(ts, tz=pytz.UTC))
print("datetime.fromtimestamp(ts).replace(tzinfo=pytz.UTC)", datetime.fromtimestamp(ts).replace(tzinfo=pytz.UTC))

The UTC machine printed this:

GENERATING TIMESTAMP:
                                           time.time() 1601469475
                            datetime.now().timestamp() 1601469475
datetime.utcnow().replace(tzinfo=pytz.UTC).timestamp() 1601469475
                         datetime.utcnow().timestamp() 1601469475

GENERATING DATETIME FROM TIMESTAMP ts = 1601469475.713351
                         datetime.fromtimestamp(ts) 2020-09-30 12:37:55.713351
            datetime.fromtimestamp(ts, tz=pytz.UTC) 2020-09-30 12:37:55.713351+00:00
datetime.fromtimestamp(ts).replace(tzinfo=pytz.UTC) 2020-09-30 12:37:55.713351+00:00

The UTC+7 machine printed this:

GENERATING TIMESTAMP:
                                           time.time() 1601469478
                            datetime.now().timestamp() 1601469478
datetime.utcnow().replace(tzinfo=pytz.UTC).timestamp() 1601469478
                         datetime.utcnow().timestamp() 1601444278

GENERATING DATETIME FROM TIMESTAMP ts = 1601469478.637603
                         datetime.fromtimestamp(ts) 2020-09-30 19:37:58.637603
            datetime.fromtimestamp(ts, tz=pytz.UTC) 2020-09-30 12:37:58.637603+00:00
datetime.fromtimestamp(ts).replace(tzinfo=pytz.UTC) 2020-09-30 19:37:58.637603+00:00

You can see that time.time() is supposed to return the same value on any machine regardless of the timezone used by that machine.

Also, suppose time.time() has been called from places with different timezones, and converted to UTC datetimes on their machines, will they all give same UTC time?

Yes, the second line from the bottom of experiment result shows that.