Re: time_t size: The year 2038 bug?

From: Mark H. Wood (mwood@IUPUI.Edu)
Date: Wed Jan 12 2000 - 12:13:18 EST


On Tue, 11 Jan 2000, Horst von Brand wrote:
> Jesse Pollard <pollard@tomcat.admin.navo.hpc.mil> said:
> [...]
> > yes it is. but the number of bits is not. On a 32 bit system "long long" is
> > 64 bits. On a 64bit system it is 128. And if you need more bits that
> > that you are out of luck. "long long" is imprecise, I'd prefer a construct
> > like "int var: 64". This way I know exactly how many bits are available.
> > If I need 128 bits for something (or even 4096) then I can define them. Or
> > is there going to be a "long long long long" for 128 bits, and "long long
> > long long long long .... long" to reach 4096?
>
> COBOL gives you this (sort of) >:-}

I was just thinking last night that this is one advantage that Multics
had, being written in PL/I:

        %DCL time_t char;
        %time_t = 'FIXED BINARY(64)';
        ...
        DCL foo time_t;
        DCL bar AUTO time_t;

(or however it is you'd do typedefs in the PL/I preprocessor -- it's been
too long....)

-- 
Mark H. Wood, Lead System Programmer   mwood@IUPUI.Edu
"Where's the kaboom?  There was supposed to be an Earth-shattering kaboom!"
	 -- Marvin Martian, 01/01/2000 00:00:00

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