From: "Mark J. Reed" <markjreed@...>
Date: 2004-01-07T12:01:42+09:00
Subject: Re: class Time doesn't pass year 2038?

On Tue, Jan 06, 2004 at 08:31:52PM -0600, Shashank Date wrote:
> "Mark J. Reed" <markjreed@mail.com> wrote in message
> > On Wed, Jan 07, 2004 at 10:06:24AM +0900, Josef 'Jupp' SCHUGT wrote:
> > > Just to point that out: We are very close to the middle of epoch
> > > (saturday, don't know the precise time by heart).
> >
> > Saturday, 2004 January 10 13:37:04 UTC
> 
> Please allow my ignorance: what is this all about? I thought epoch was just
> a unit of time.
> Did not know that it had a middle. :-)

Technically, an epoch is a point from which time is
measured; the UNIX epoch is Thursday, January 1, 1970 AD/CE at
midnight UTC/GMT in the Gregorian calendar.

What we were referring to is the fact that UNIX systems *measure* time using
a signed 32-bit integer representing the number of (non-leap) seconds since
the epoch.   This limits the range of representable times; the latest
representable one is Tuesday, January 19, 2038 at 03:14:07 UTC,
which is 2^31-1 seconds from the epoch.

The midpoint of the representable range is this Saturday.

Presumably, by the time 2038 rolls around, UNIX systems will be using
64-bit integers for timekeeping, which will hold us for about half
a trillion years.

-Mark


Mon Jan 18 22:14:07 2038

Tue Jan 19 03:14:07 2038


> 
> --- shanko
> 
>