Re: The 2001-09-09 bug...

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#21

From: Harry Broomhall
Date: Tue, 11 Sep 2001 07:35

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On Mon, 10 Sep 2001 22:08:18 +0100, Dr John Stockton
<spam@merlyn.demon.co.uk> wrote:

>JRS:  reproduced for info, note newsgroups line & FU :
>
>In news:comp.software.year-2000, Falissard <th.falissard@etic.fr> wrote
>at Sun, 9 Sep 2001 18:03:57 :-
>
>>The Un*x time function time_t counts seconds elapsed from 1/1/1970
>>(the Base Date for UN*X).
>>
>>On 2001-09-09 at 01:46:40 GMT ...
>>  ... exactly 1 billion seconds
>>have elapsed since the base date.
>>
>>I got a bug in some homegrown compiled REXX programs because
>>1 billion = 1000000000 represents 10 digits, and REXX by default
>>handles only 9 digits ("numeric digits 9" is the default value).
>>I had to increase the "numeric digits" value...
> 

   Another surprise from this one (sometimes known as the S1G moment)
was with the replication part of OpenLDAP where a programmer decided
that a strcmp() on the text representation of time_t would be
good-enough.

   Regards,
           Harry.

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From: Harry Broomhall <haeb@pc60.demon.co.uk>
Newsgroups: uk.tech.misc,demon.tech.pc
Subject: Re: The 2001-09-09 bug...
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