Y2038

Andreas Fuchs asf at boinkor.net
Wed Nov 5 23:45:29 PST 2003


Today, David Cuthbert <dacut at xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> The hard part is if a program marshalls a time_t out to disk.  On
> this front, even properly-written programs may have issues with old
> data files.

Yes, for example tzfile(5):

     The above header is followed by tzh_timecnt four-byte values of type
     long, sorted in ascending order.  These values are written in ``stan-
     dard'' byte order.  Each is used as a transition time (as returned by
     time(3)) at which the rules for computing local time change.

So time zones are defined to be valid until 2038. Urgh.

I'd like to point out http://heim.ifi.uio.no/~enag/lugm-time.html in
this context (-:

Still, I'd say go for it (for a 64 bit time_t). The sooner all broken
time_t programs are noticed, the sooner they'll get fixed (:

-- 
Andreas Fuchs, <asf at xxxxxxx>, asf at xxxxxxxxx, antifuchs






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