From: Ben Tilly <ben_tilly@...>
Date: 2001-01-31T11:04:11+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:10153] Re: DateTime class for Ruby?

andy@toolshed.com (Andrew Hunt) wrote:
>
>On Wed, 31 Jan 2001 06:43:05 +0900, Michael Neumann 
><neumann@s-direktnet.de>
>wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > Is there a "DateTime" class in Ruby, which can handle dates before 1970
> > as well as storing the time?
> > If I use Date from "date.rb" this will not store the time, and
> > if I use Time this will raise an "time out of range" error when year is 
>below 1970 (UNIX-date :(.
>
>
>Most people don't seem to care about time when dealing with
>dates a few hundred years old :-)
>
>Just out of curiosity, what is the application that
>requires this?

I don't know what application they had, but there are
quite a few that I know where the Unix default is not
acceptable.  In general what you want is a generic date
class.  You don't care about the time per se, except
as a convenient way to figure out business days while
calculating (for instance) loan payment schedules.

For a random application where you would care about an
actual time several decades past, consider astrology
programs.

A general-purpose library should attempt to anticipate
and provide for unexpected uses...

Cheers,
Ben
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