Support fractional durations

[schneiderfelipe]

It would be nice to have 1.5 hour parsed the same way 1 hour 30 min is.

EDIT: the error is currently duration::Error::InvalidCharacter(1).

[tailhook]

In the general case, It's unclear what precision of that should be. Is it all the way to nanoseconds?

[schneiderfelipe]

For my use case, that would be unnecessary (seconds are enough).
But it makes sense for 1.5 hour to be as precise as 1 hour 30 min as possible?

[tailhook]

For my use case, that would be unnecessary (seconds are enough). But it makes sense for 1.5 hour to be as precise as 1 hour 30 min as possible?

Well, but this should be configurable then, and it's a big piece of code in this case.

We probably have to do Duration::from_secs_f64(3600.*float_hours) instead. But then I'm not sure if just decimals are enough or somebody also wants exponential notation.

So I'm not sure if I want to open this can of worms.

[schneiderfelipe]

We probably have to do Duration::from_secs_f64(3600.*float_hours) instead. But then I'm not sure if just decimals are enough or somebody also wants exponential notation.

Exponential notation would be too much, I think. Just parsing a simple float (\d+\.\d+) and doing the multiplication you suggested would be more than enough for most use cases I think.

[9999years]

Agreed that support for float durations would be really nice (I want to be able to parse 0.5 seconds).

I do understand not wanting to open this can of worms -- floats are tricky and this could add a lot of complexity. At the same time, I think @schneiderfelipe is right that even the most naive implementation would be very useful.

If this feature isn't added, we should improve the error message to clarify that decimals aren't allowed.