Greg A. Woods Sent: Thursday, December 23, 1999 11:28 AM
[ On Wednesday, December 22, 1999 at 23:58:21 (-0500), Andrew Brown wrote: ]
Subject: Re: Silly season
it would be better, imho, to go to a 64 bit signed time_t, but that would be a major flag day.
"would be"!?!?! :-)
No, it *WILL* be an important day, but it will happen on a per-system basis (and perhaps per-protocol basis if indeed there are any network protocols carrying time_t or similar values).
Those of us implementing 64-bit OS (Alpha, Merced, etc) get this as part of the package. However, this does NOT correct databases that already have a 32-bit time_t (which shouldn't be the case, but is a good probability [lazy coders]). Ergo, even the fact that 90% of the computers will be 64-bit safe by 2038 won't save us. Stored data will have to be checked and the conversion will obsolete many backup tapes. What I am saying is that there is still a data-migration issue, just like Y2K. The problem is only transitive in protocols and running code, there is not much inertia there, but the real problem is data in long-term storage, where inertia is the name of the game.