Send a message THROUGH TIME in Python (joke)

20th September 2009, 01:56 pm

Who says time travel isn’t possible?

import time
 
def send_to_future(message, seconds):
    time.sleep(seconds)
    return message

I’ll leave it up to someone else to write the send_to_past() function. ;-)

4 Comments

20 September 2009, 6:26 pm
ferringb wrote,

Should’ve used deferreds… they fit the joke better ;)
21 September 2009, 2:22 am
Juho Vepsäläinen wrote,

Perhaps something along
```
import time
 
def send_to_past(message, seconds):
    print message
    time.sleep(seconds):
    print 'Sent message to the past."
```
would do the trick. (Based on the idea that this moment is the past of the future.)
21 September 2009, 4:42 am
Marius Gedminas wrote,

Easy: just pass a negative number for seconds.

For your send to past function, I suggest resetting the system clock to an earlier time.
Something on the order of

import time, os
def send_to_past(message, seconds):
 
    t1 = time.time()
    os.system( 'date %s' % asctime(t1-seconds)) 
    return message

You can verify it works by:

print 'sending message at time', time.asctime()
m2 = send_to_past("Posting this message")
print 'received message at time', time.asctime()
print m2