6 Aug
2012
6 Aug
'12
10:28 a.m.
On 06/08/12 11:44 AM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
...
Unix choose 32-bit integers, counting seconds since 1970. Also a rather
restricted range, and yes, it will run out in 2038, or something like
The 32 bit representation does.
$ date -r `echo '2^31-1'|bc`
Mon 18 Jan 2038 22:14:07 EST
Breaking many utilities:
$ date -r `echo '2^31'|bc`
Fri 13 Dec 1901 15:45:52 EST
But most Unixes now use a 64 bit representation, I believe.
This email quoted at top of this page is hilarious.
http://maul.deepsky.com/~merovech/2038.html
--T
that (someone else can look up the specifics, it's
widespread, and
simple to calculate yourself if you want to).
However, it was a reasonable choice for Unix when initially done on a
PDP-11.
...