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Date:      Sat, 15 Aug 1998 18:20:33 +0930
From:      Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com>
To:        Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com>, Matthew Hunt <mph@pobox.com>
Cc:        brawley@camtech.com.au, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Do we have a Y2K problem after all? (was 64-bit time_t)
Message-ID:  <19980815182033.E22238@freebie.lemis.com>
In-Reply-To: <199808142303.QAA23463@usr04.primenet.com>; from Terry Lambert on Fri, Aug 14, 1998 at 11:03:14PM %2B0000
References:  <19980814000605.A25012@astro.psu.edu> <199808142303.QAA23463@usr04.primenet.com>

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On Friday, 14 August 1998 at 23:03:14 +0000, Terry Lambert wrote:
>>> Question: What is wrong with using an unsigned long for time_t, instead of
>>> long (which is then assumed signed).
>>
>> man 3 time:
>>
>>      Upon successful completion, time() returns the value of time.  Otherwise
>>      a value of ((time_t) -1) is returned and the global variable errno is set
>>      to indicate the error.
>
> See also:
>
> http://www.eunet.pt/ano2000/sun/sup_sun5.htm

A very interesting page.  It doesn't have much to do with the subject
of the purpose of time_t, but it does indicate that we haven't done
all our homework relating to Y2K.  How much of the changes suggested
in this page should *we* emulate?

> Negative values are (potentially) abused for dates back to December
> 13th, 1901.

I didn't see the word "abuse" anywhere in the page.  What's wrong with
using negative time_t if they're defined in the spec?

Greg
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