At 04:05 2001/08/14 -0500, you wrote:
> > I'm curious as to the datum chosen - why not Jan 1, 1970 like C (at
>least
> > the Borland implementation)? That will last until the 22nd century -
>I'll
> > be dead :(
>
>As other people have mentioned, the 1904 date comes from the Macintosh,
>which also used that as the beginning of its seconds-count epoch. The
>advantage of this date is that all years that can be represented by it
>follow a simple pattern for computing leap years. 1900 wasn't a leap
>year, but 2000 was, and the 32-bit value runs out before 2100 which is
>not a leap year. It makes the whole "seconds to date" calculation a
>little easier.
This is a sensible explanation. I wondered why Palm would support 95+ years
of the past, but only 30 years of future :)
Ease of calculations aside, choosing 1904 as a datum is going to be a pain
sooner than later. The big excuse for 2000 were that computer memory was
REALLY limited (and hey, year 2000 was 30-40 years away!!!!) Given that
debacle, I don't understand why a new OS would be designed with a
comparable problem which will likely strike during the lifetime of the OS
or its direct descendents.
My two cents... (as you can guess, I've been messing around with the time
functions a bit).
Erik Blake
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