🚀 go-pugleaf

karl@ima.isc.com (Karl Heuer) writes:
>Unfortunately, in order to allow for implementations that have no clock, the
>Standard requires that |time()| be able to return the constant |(time_t)-1|
>to indicate failure.  Hence, |time_t| must be an arithmetic type.

Well, time_t must be a type which can be cast to and from -1.  So there's no
reason it couldn't be a struct __timeval, with a special case in the compiler,
right?  The special case would work as follows:  If you cast -1 to struct
__timeval (which you probably invoke by casting it to time_t), then it yields
an external reference to __no_timeval, which is a struct __timeval in the
library with all zeroes or whatever's convenient.  I don't think you can cast a
time_t to int or long or anything like that, but if you could, this cast could
turn into ((arg.__errorindicator == 53) ? -1 : 0) or whatever test is
appropriate.  Finally, we have comparisons: If you compare two time_t's, well
perhaps you're allowed to compare them in general, in which case this would
have to turn into a full comparison, but otherwise, it could just check whether
or not they were both __no_timeval's or both not.

Workable?