Something struck me as unexpected today while working in Python. I had a function to take a datetime object and convert it into epoch milliseconds:

import datetime
import time

this_tz = 'US/Eastern'

def get_epch_ms(dttm=datetime.datetime.now(pytz.timezone(this_tz))):
    # Returns milliseconds since epoch for datetime object passed.
    # If no argument is passed, uses *now* as time basis.
    # DOES NOT APPEAR TO REFRESH 'dttm' BETWEEN EXECUTIONS.

    return int(time.mktime(dttm.astimezone(pytz.timezone(this_tz)).timetuple()) * 1000.0 + round(dttm.microsecond / 1000.0))

This function works fine: call it with get_epch_ms() and the epoch millisecond value for *now* is returned; however, I noticed during subsequent calls to the function within the same execution of the broader application that the value of dttm did not update each time. I.e., it appears as if the logic used to populate a default value – dttm=datetime.datetime.now(pytz.timezone(this_tz)) – was executed only during the first call to the function, and that same value was used for subsequent calls. It took me a bit to track this down, not sure if it’s just something I’ve never come up against before.

The fix is simple enough, though involved a couple of additional lines of code:

import datetime
import time

this_tz = 'US/Eastern'

def get_epch_ms(dttm=None):

    # Returns milliseconds since epoch for datetime object passed.
    # If no argument is passed, uses *now* as time basis.
    # Refreshes 'dttm' between calls to this function.

    if dttm is None:
        dttm = datetime.datetime.now(pytz.timezone(this_tz))

    return int(time.mktime(dttm.astimezone(pytz.timezone(this_tz)).timetuple()) * 1000.0 + round(dttm.microsecond / 1000.0))

The updated function properly provides an updated timestamp at each invocation, when called as get_epch_ms().