[OSM-dev] Osmosis enableDateParsing

[Brett Henderson]

Jochen Topf wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 08, 2009 at 09:29:50PM +1100, Brett Henderson wrote:
>   
>> Jochen Topf wrote:
>>     
>>> On Thu, Jan 08, 2009 at 12:06:59PM +1100, Brett Henderson wrote:
>>>   
>>>       
>>>> However it should be very fast now.  I recently implemented a change to 
>>>> keep the date as a string internally (I thought I sent you an email 
>>>> about this, could be wrong).  If it is written to xml again the previous 
>>>> date string is used unchanged.  If it is written to something like a 
>>>> database then the string will be parsed when it is required.  Even if 
>>>> parsing does occur, the custom code used internally is orders of 
>>>> magnitude faster than standard java xml date parsing classes.  It is the 
>>>> same code I submitted for JOSM though so has been around for some time now.
>>>>     
>>>>         
>>> So can we get rid of the option?
>>>   
>>>       
>> It is still useful if the input file doesn't include timestamps.  I 
>> remember somebody using that recently.  I'll add a comment to the wiki 
>> to let people know it isn't useful for speed any more.
>>     
>
> Shouldn't Osmosis be able to see by itself that there is no timestamp to
> parse in that case?
>   
A timestamp is required by most downstream tasks.  Osmosis could detect 
a missing timestamp but then it would have to invent one.  I'd prefer to 
play it safe than do something unexpected like that.  But I don't care 
strongly about it.