Is there a way to use Time#strftime to generate a string that contains milliseconds, and to do so in such a way that Time.parse understands it? In other words, a value of ms_format that makes this work: t_now = Time.at(1125180070.216) diff = Time.parse(t_now.strftime(ms_format)) - t_now diff.abs < 0.001 # ==> true The default format does not represent milliseconds, so the diff can be up to 1.0: default_format = "%a %b %d %H:%M:%S %Z %Y" t_now = Time.at(1125180070.216) diff = Time.parse(t_now.strftime(default_format)) - t_now p diff.abs # => 0.216 -- vjoel : Joel VanderWerf : path berkeley edu : 510 665 3407