Comparison of two `time` objects with different timezones

Question

I'm comparing two time objects with different timezones, and looks like it's actually ignoring the timezone, testing only the hour/minute/second components.

Let's create two time objects:

from datetime import time
import pytz

CET = pytz.timezone('CET')
Japan = pytz.timezone('Japan')

t1 = time(1,2,3, tzinfo=CET)
t2 = time(1,2,3, tzinfo=Japan)

Printing them, we see that they're pretty different:

datetime.time(1, 2, 3, tzinfo=<DstTzInfo 'CET' CET+1:00:00 STD>)
datetime.time(1, 2, 3, tzinfo=<DstTzInfo 'Japan' JST+9:00:00 STD>)

Now, let's compare them:

t1 == t2
#-> True

Ehm, what? How is it possible that Python treats them equal?

Answer 1

Both of your time objects are "naive" according to https://docs.python.org/2/library/datetime.html#datetime.tzinfo:

A time object t is aware if t.tzinfo is not None and t.tzinfo.utcoffset(None) does not return None. Otherwise, t is naive.

print(t1.tzinfo, t1.tzinfo.utcoffset(None))
print(t2.tzinfo, t2.tzinfo.utcoffset(None))

Gives us:

(<DstTzInfo 'CET' CET+1:00:00 STD>, None)
(<DstTzInfo 'Japan' JST+9:00:00 STD>, None)

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https://docs.python.org/2/library/datetime.html#module-datetime

A naive object does not contain enough information to unambiguously locate itself relative to other date/time objects.

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In other words: the objects have no date and so it cannot be determined whether or not daylight saving time applies. They're ambiguous, and running t.utcoffset() for either will return None. Which leaves the timezones being ignored entirely in the comparison because they're effectively meaningless.

Answer 2

From the docs regarding naive and aware time objects:

A time object t is aware if t.tzinfo is not None and t.tzinfo.utcoffset(None) does not return None.

In your case, both t1 and t2 return None for t1.tzinfo.utcoffset(None) and t2.tzinfo.utcoffset(None). Hence your objects are naive and not aware.

So effectively you're comparing '01:02:03' with '01:02:03' which is True.