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From: wnp@iiasa.ac.at (wolf paul)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp
Subject: Re: UUCP status files and wierd dates - revisted.
Message-ID: <967@iiasa.UUCP>
Date: 24 Nov 90 15:40:34 GMT
References: <736@dynasys.UUCP> <803@sci34hub.UUCP> <754@dynasys.UUCP>
Sender: news@iiasa.AT
Reply-To: wnp%iiasa@relay.eu.net (wolf paul)
Organization: International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg, Austria
Lines: 22

In article <754@dynasys.UUCP> jessea@dynasys.UUCP () writes:
>In article <803@sci34hub.UUCP>, gary@sci34hub.sci.com (Gary Heston) wrote the following:
>>The date is the internal format, which is defined as the number of seconds
>>since January 1, 1970. (Reportedly day 0, year 0, of the age of Unix.)
>
>WHY is this date used?  WHY can't the beginning of the year be used instead?
>It seems like a waste of resources to compute a date from the number of
>seconds given for a twenty year old date - especially if so many programs

Well, how would you do this? If you stored dates as computed from the
beginning of the year (I presume you mean the current year), then you
need to also store the current year somewhere. Just as easy, if not
easier, to use a known reference date. 

What I do not understand, however, is why a number of MS-DOS compilers
instead used 01/01/80 as the "epoch" for their UNIX-like ctime
functions.
--
W.N.Paul, Int. Institute f. Applied Systems Analysis, A-2361 Laxenburg--Austria
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