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=head1 TITLE
Standardize ALL Perl platforms on UNIX epoch
=head1 VERSION
Maintainer: Nathan Wiger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: 14 Aug 2000
Last-Modified: 15 Aug 2000
Version: 2
Mailing List: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Number: 99
Status: Developing
=head1 ABSTRACT
Currently, internal time in Perl is maintained via C<time>, which is
highly system-dependent. On some systems, this is relative to the UNIX
epoch, while others use their own epochs (MacPerl uses 1904, for
example).
All versions of Perl on all platforms should maintain time both
internally and externally as seconds since the UNIX epoch (00:00:00 01
Jan 1970 UTC).
=head1 DESCRIPTION
Time is a dicey issue. While everyone disagrees on what the "right"
epoch is to use, everyone generally agrees that time synchronization
across different versions of Perl is a good thing.
The UNIX epoch is already a widely-established standard and seems as
good as any. This has the added benefit that most users will see no
change, since most users use a version of Perl which is already based on
the UNIX epoch.
=head1 IMPLEMENTATION
The C<time> core function must be changed to return the number of
seconds since the UNIX epoch on ALL platforms. Note this behavior is
inconsistent with previous versions of C<time> and must be noted clearly
in the documentation.
=head1 CHANGES
Version 1 of this RFC was entitled
"Maintain internal time in Modified Julian (not epoch)".
=head1 REFERENCES
RFC 48: Replace localtime() and gmtime() with date() and utcdate()
