Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!mit-eddie!bloom-beacon!vaxeline!bootsie!olson
From: olson@bootsie.UUCP (Eric Olson)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp
Subject: Re: UUCP status files and wierd dates - revisted.
Message-ID: <37@bootsie.UUCP>
Date: 28 Nov 90 10:37:52 GMT
References: <754@dynasys.UUCP> <1990Nov22.024607.7474@decuac.dec.com> <756@dynasys.UUCP> <1990Nov27.151512.24352@decuac.dec.com>
Reply-To: olson@endor.harvard.edu (Eric Olson)
Followup-To: /dev/null
Organization: Lexington Software Design, Lexington, MA
Lines: 26

In article <1990Nov27.151512.24352@decuac.dec.com> mjr@hussar.dco.dec.com (Marcus J. Ranum) writes:
>In article <756@dynasys.UUCP> jessea@dynasys.UUCP () writes:
>>I'm just trying to find out and so far I still haven't had my question
>>answered.  In less than five years we will be calculating a 25 year old 
>>date and the total number will be approxiamately 817314005(approximation
>>of Nov. 26 1995).  [...]
>
>	very, very, very little difference. dates are stored as an
>(time_t, really) integer, and conversions are performed mathematically [...]

The _real_ problem with storing dates as "number of seconds since Jan 1, 1970"
is that sometime in the year 2106, all the dates are gonna wrap around to
1970 again!

Of course, by then, we _might_ have given up on unix :-) :-) :-) :-) .

-Eric

P.S. Macintosh computers store the date as the number of seconds since 1/1/1904,
which means they will wrap around sometime in the year 2040!!!

-- 
Eric K. Olson, Editor, Prepare()       NOTE: olson@bootsie.uucp will not work!
Lexington Software Design              Internet: olson@endor.harvard.edu
72A Lowell St., Lexington, MA 02173    Usenet:   harvard!endor!olson
(617) 863-9624                         Bitnet:   OLSON@HARVARD