I disagree, in that I think they are only somewhat helpful. If we only had double-quoted strings, and not single-quoted strings, then I think there would be little difference to the language or its quality of use.
Going back to the question of "why st_mtime?" - that's because os.stat() is a wrapper around the POSIX stat(2) system call. My FreeBSD man page defines it as:
st_mtim Time when file data last modified. Changed by the mkdir(2),
mkfifo(2), mknod(2), utimes(2), write(2) and writev(2) sys-
tem calls.
The Python implementation of stat for MS Windows is basically doing its own emulation layer for POSIX compatibility.
I disagree, in that I think they are only somewhat helpful. If we only had double-quoted strings, and not single-quoted strings, then I think there would be little difference to the language or its quality of use.
Going back to the question of "why st_mtime?" - that's because os.stat() is a wrapper around the POSIX stat(2) system call. My FreeBSD man page defines it as:
The Python implementation of stat for MS Windows is basically doing its own emulation layer for POSIX compatibility.