Re: RFD: x32 ABI system call numbers

[Geert Uytterhoeven]

On Wed, Aug 31, 2011 at 21:18, Arnd Bergmann <arnd@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Wednesday 31 August 2011 09:48:35 Linus Torvalds wrote:
>> On Wed, Aug 31, 2011 at 9:39 AM, Arnd Bergmann <arnd@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> >
>> > Well, we could chicken out and just use unsigned int for time_t on new
>> > 32 bit ABIs, which would buy us time until ~2106 before we need to
>> > convert everything to 64 bit...
>>
>> You do realize that there are probably quite a lot of programs that
>> depend on signed time_t because they really do care about dates before
>> 1970?
>
> Yes, it already occurred to me after I had written the above that we
> really want it to be signed, especially to allow a meaningful conversion
> at least one-way between 32 and 64 bit time_t values.

If you care about dates before 1970, you're using time_t not to store
the current
time +/- some epsilon, for a "reasonable small epsilon", but to store real
dates. That was never a good idea. During the early days of UNIX, when the 1970
base was chosen, lots of people born before 1902 were still alive...

Gr{oetje,eeting}s,

            Geert

--
Geert Uytterhoeven -- There's lots of Linux beyond ia32 -- geert@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But
when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like that.
             Â Â -- Linus Torvalds
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