Re: Matcompat's datenum.m weirdness

[E. Joshua Rigler]

I'm not sure what you mean.  I certainly shouldn't have to change my
timezone setting on my system.  Is there a way to do this within
Octave?  If timezone is indeed the reason for this error, (and 7/24, my
GMT offset, _is_ .2916666666...), is there ANY conceivable reason for
this?

This definitely supports my theory that any/all date and time functions
should be written from scratch, and not be dependent on C/C++'s
libraries, which are not intended for science or engineering work.  At
the very least a correction should be made to the current routine for
timezone errors.

-EJR


James Howard wrote:
> 
> On Wed, 29 Aug 2001, E. Joshua Rigler wrote:
> 
> > Can someone explain the following?
> >
> >  octave:240> datenum (1995, 01, 05)
> >  ans = 728664.291666667
> >               ^^^^^^^^^
> >
> > In particular, why is there a fractional day?  I included no hours,
> 
> Without a lot of evidence, I think it is a timezone issue.  Set your
> timezone to GMT before starting Octave and this should work.  Or, run
> datenum(1995,1,5,17,0,0) because Colorado is seven hours behind GMT (I am
> in DC and we are five back).
> 
> Jamie



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