From: Dimitri Aivaliotis <aglarond@...>
Date: 2005-07-21T20:57:35+09:00
Subject: Re: Date.to_time error

On 7/21/05, Brian Candler <B.Candler@pobox.com> wrote:

> But what's wrong with negative time values?
> 
> Unix supports this AFAIK. This with FreeBSD:
> 
> $ date -r -1000000
> Sat Dec 20 11:13:20 BST 1969
> 
> And the big time wraparound occurs at t = 2^31, not t = 2^32:
> 
> $ date -r 2147483647
> Tue Jan 19 03:14:07 GMT 2038
> 

Hmm...never thought of that.

Time.at(-2147483648)
=> Fri Dec 13 21:45:52 CET 1901

It does work...

On my machine (Linux, Ruby 1.8.2), the to_time method isn't in the
standard library: it's a part of facets (I've got version 0.7.2), and
it's defined as follows:

class Date
  def to_time(form = :local)
    ::Time.send(form, year, month, day)
  end
end

It also seems to work for me:

start_date = Date.new(1901, 01, 01)
start_date.to_time
=> Fri Dec 13 21:45:52 CET 1901

Maybe the OP could post a few more details about his set-up.  Which
version of the one-click installer is it?  Or maybe it's a platform
problem (WinXP not supporting negative times)?

- Dimitri