Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!sun-barr!texsun!texbell!uhnix1!sugar!ficc!peter From: peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) Newsgroups: comp.lang.c Subject: Re: Some Comments & Questions about ANSI C Message-ID: <4526@ficc.uu.net> Date: 13 Jun 89 11:39:40 GMT References: Organization: Xenix Support Lines: 19 In article , geoff@cs.warwick.ac.uk (Geoff Rimmer) writes: > 3. Am I missing something, or is "difftime" the most simple function > around? It seems to me that it is essentially a subtract. time_t doesn't have to be an integer count of seconds. In fact, on MS-DOS machines time_t looks pretty much like this: Bits: 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 Low word: | HOURS | MINUTES | SECONDS/2 | High word: | YEARS-1980 | MONTHS | DAYS | On AmigaDOS, it's three words containing days in the epoch, minutes, and ticks (50 ticks to a second), though most compilers turn this into a UNIX style second count if you use a UNIX-style library call. -- Peter da Silva, Xenix Support, Ferranti International Controls Corporation. Business: uunet.uu.net!ficc!peter, peter@ficc.uu.net, +1 713 274 5180. Personal: ...!texbell!sugar!peter, peter@sugar.hackercorp.com.