Dumb questions about GMT offset in tm structure

Guy Harris seismo!sun!guy
Wed Mar 18 00:53:07 UTC 1987


	Sometimes we need subsecond precision.

Yes, but "time_t"s need not provide subsecond precision;
4.[23]BSD-style "struct timeval" may not be ideal, but they do the
job.

	Sometimes we care about things that happened in the 19th century
	(birthdates, for example.)

Yes, but nothing in a UNIX system happened in the 19th century.
Non-UNIX systems lacking "time_t" have done quite well dealing with
times; I don't see any need to use "time_t" for every kind of
timestamp any application could possibly want.  It might be
aesthetically "nice" to have the time representation used by the OS
be the same that would be used by every conceivable application, but
I don't see that it's worth the effort of changing what a "time_t"
is.  (There are plenty of OSes out there with the same problem; the
VMS epoch starts 00:00 - local time, I believe - November 17, 1858.)



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