time_t

[Charles Day]

On Mon, Jul 14, 2008 at 8:07 AM, Stuart D. Gathman <stuart at gathman.org>
wrote:

> On Mon, 14 Jul 2008, Martin Preuss wrote:
>
> > Though he currently doesn't need to enter dates which are outside the
> scope of
> > time_t he is curious about the reason of the limitation to time_t instead
> of
> > using another, wider type.
>

Exactly.


> > Maybe gnucash lives long enough to exceed the date range offered by
> time_t and
> > then the question might arise again :-)
>
> Indeed, Dec 18, 2038 is coming fast.
>

Yes, considering that some folks have mortgage payments spread over 30
years, i.e. through 2038. So to some degree, time_t will be obsolete 6
months from now. There has been talk of 50 year mortgages in the U.S., and
these may already be available elsewhere.

Why use a time stamp?  My companies' accounting system uses a 32-bit day no
> -
> days since the Jewish/Christian traditional creation in 4012 BC (Julian
> day).
> Most accounting computations deal with days between dates (subtract)
> or day of the week (modulo 7).  Functions like "last day of month" are
> trivial with dayno->mdy and mdy->dayno conversions.  Conversion to/from
> month,day,year is small and simple for Gregorian Calendar (code on
> request).
> Other calendars are just as easy and earn Geek points.
>
> If there is some module that requires actual timestamps (say pickup and
> delivery tracking), it can store a wider type, or tack-on a timeofday
> field.
>

Time of day is important in some areas, such as price quotes (or at least it
should be), so if there is any change at all then I would think using a
wider type makes more sense than dropping time of day.


>
> --
>               Stuart D. Gathman <stuart at bmsi.com>
> Business Management Systems Inc.  Phone: 703 591-0911 Fax: 703 591-6154
> "Confutatis maledictis, flamis acribus addictis" - background song for
> a Microsoft sponsored "Where do you want to go from here?" commercial.
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-Charles