> The advantage of an obscure one-liner is
> that it is obvious what it does, particularly for someone with a
> C/UNIX background.

Well, I would argue that the C/Unix legacy in terms of dates and times isn't an example to follow. Python does not force you to use strcat() to concatenate strings, either ;)

But besides, the issue is more how people are supposed to invent that one-liner, let alone remember it easily. Perhaps adding it in the documentation would be a good middle ground, if you think it shouldn't be added to the stdlib.

> Do you have other examples of this sort?

Well, for example, the datetime module encourages you to use "aware" datetime objects (rather than so-called "naive" objects), but there isn't a single facility to do so. You must reinvent a whole timezone class from scratch.