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From: herrickd@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com
Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp
Subject: Re: UUCP status files and wierd dates - revisted.
Message-ID: <2131.275127e1@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com>
Date: 26 Nov 90 19:34:09 GMT
References: <736@dynasys.UUCP> <803@sci34hub.UUCP> <754@dynasys.UUCP> <967@iiasa.UUCP>
Lines: 32

In article <967@iiasa.UUCP>, wnp@iiasa.ac.at (wolf paul) writes:
> 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.

Same reason.  The world began on 01/01/80.  If you take your copy of
MSDOS to a machine that does not have a clock/calendar chip to initialize
the MSDOS time of day clock and boot it, you will find that the date
ie 1 January 1980.

dan herrick
herrickd@astro.pc.ab.com

> --
> W.N.Paul, Int. Institute f. Applied Systems Analysis, A-2361 Laxenburg--Austria
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