You'd make a mistake if you think the 2038 problem will magically resolve itself if time_t is suddenly a 64 bit integer. If it were that simple, wouldn't you think many operating systems already had done so? Some obvious problems:

• Unless all systems switch from 32 bit time_t to 64 bit time_t at the same time, you will have problems when two systems share information (say, using NFS).
• Modyfing your OS to use a 64 bit time_t doesn't magically change your data. Your file system uses 32 bit timestamps. What do you think would happen if you upgrade your OS to use 64 bit time_t, and it starts assuming your inodes are 12 bytes longer?

2038 is not going to be disaster, unless too many will think that just upgrading to a 64 bit time_t will magically solve all problems. (If it were that simple, we could have let localtime() return a 4 digit year to avoid Y2K.)

Some time ago, I saw the timetable SUN is going to use to introduce a 64 bit time_t value. It's going to be a 10+ year traject.

Abigail

---

---

Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!

Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.

Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.

Please read these before you post! —

• How do I compose an effective node title?
• How do I post a question effectively?
• Markup in the Monastery

Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:

a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr

You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)

	For:		Use:
	&		&
	<		&lt;
	>		&gt;
	[		&#91;
	]		&#93;

Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?

See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.