[Python-Dev] datetime module enhancements (original) (raw)

Sjoerd Mullender sjoerd at acm.org
Sat Mar 10 13:04:45 CET 2007

On 03/09/2007 08:56 PM, Martin v. Löwis wrote:

Sjoerd Mullender

Christian Heimes schrieb:

BJörn Lindqvist schrieb:

I think it should be a ValueError, given that the programmer is very likely to further use the returned timestamp to for example insert stuff in a database. Unix timestamps are not unambiguously defined for any years other than 1970 to 2038 imho. IIRC the unix timestamp was originally definied as signed int with 32bit. "Unix" time stamps where never defined as being 32bit. That is just an implementation detail. timet was defined as an int, in second since 1970, and that is all what was defined. Whether or not an int is 32bits depends on the hardware (and the compiler); this was never part of Unix.

As I remember, the time() system call on Version 7 Unix on the (16 bit) PDP 11 returned the time as a C long, which on that machine was 32 bits. I just looked at the Version 6 Unix listing, and there too, the time is returned as a 32 bit quantity.

I also seem to remember that in the early days, there was no such thing as an unsigned long, so the value was necessarily signed. But I may be misremembering this bit.

-- Sjoerd Mullender

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