Re: [O] dates before 1970

[Nick Dokos]

Carsten Dominik <address@hidden> wrote:


> THis is exactly the point, that it depends on how Emacs was compiled, and 
> what kind of integer is used in the date representation.  Signed or unsigend, 
> 32 or 64 bits (I think).
> 
> For example, Bastien can represent dates before 1970. I cannot.
> I can represent dates after 2038, Bastien cannot.
> 
> The work-around is to use diary sexps for dates before 1970, that seems to be 
> safe.
> And then hope that by 2038, all computers will use 64 bit integers....
> 

But it's even more than that, no? Emacs's time implementation
(current-time, encode/decode etc) would have to change. In fact, this
might be the most significant limitation right now: the values they pass
around are (hi16 lo16 ms) so they assume that time values are 32 bits,
no matter what the underlying implementation says. I use 64-bit Linux on
an x86-64 laptop and my time_t is 64 bits (but I don't know if it's
signed or unsigned). Time for some experimentation I guess...

Nick