Re: RFC 99 (v3) Standardize ALL Perl platforms on UNIX epoch

[Bart Lateur]

On 13 Sep 2000 14:22:30 -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:

>I think it should be specified that the return value is seconds since Unix
>epoch and the storage size be left unspecified, from the language
>perspective.  On those platforms that support it, using 64 bits is
>obviously a good idea.

64 bits is a good idea on any platform. The processors can handle it,
even if they're not 64 bit processors. One problem is: can your C
compiler handle it?

Now, on those platforms without 64 bit support, a double float has a lot
more mantissa bits than 32, typically 50-something (on a total of 64
bits). This means that all integers with up to more than 50 significant
bits can exactly be represented. That would be a lot better than the
current situation of 32 bits.

-- 
        Bart.