Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site lsuc.UUCP Path: utzoo!lsuc!msb From: msb@lsuc.UUCP (Mark Brader) Newsgroups: net.lang.c Subject: Re: Re: ANSI C. Message-ID: <1059@lsuc.UUCP> Date: Wed, 22-Jan-86 20:36:40 EST Article-I.D.: lsuc.1059 Posted: Wed Jan 22 20:36:40 1986 Date-Received: Wed, 22-Jan-86 21:57:54 EST References: <3502@brl-tgr.ARPA> <618@baylor.UUCP> Reply-To: msb@lsuc.UUCP (Mark Brader) Organization: Law Society of Upper Canada, Toronto Lines: 15 Summary: Unfortunately, the world is not all UNIX > > difftime() accepts time_t arguments but returns a double. > What's wrong with returning a long? > > What's wrong with having a function: > > long seconds(time) > time_t time; What's wrong is that some non-UNIX systems may wish to keep their internal times based on an origin that is much earlier than UNIX's start-of-1970-GMT. Then a time in seconds-since-origin won't fit in a long. Mark Brader