> Please don't insinuate that someone hasn't read an article

I read the article. Yes, localtime requires the call; that wasn't my point. My point was that for plenty of common, server-side code, either this isn't required, or is inconsequential.

The former case that I was consider is the formatting of timestamps into TZs in the context of a request being server by a server. Most server-side TZ conversions I've ever needed can't call localtime, b/c localtime is wired to not the user's timezone, but the TZ of the machine the server's code is running on, which is typically either nonsense, UTC, or whatever the devs like. Server side code needs (of course, YMMV) to use the user's TZ, whatever that may be, so I'm making calls to a library built for that, e.g., pytz, which doesn't need to stat() that the machines TZ as there is no point to doing so.

The other instances the author lists that do require localtime are instances where localtime's stat call is the least of your worries, as you're about to perform other operations that are much more expensive.