Thread: 2038.
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Old 27th March 2009
BSDfan666 BSDfan666 is offline
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This is a well know problem, I suspect anyone using Unix for more then a year knows of it.

I suspect that when the decision was made to use a signed 32-bit integer for time_t, larger types were either unavailable or inefficient..

These days, some systems are switching to a signed 64-bit integer.. using an unsigned 32-bit integer would have caused considerable compatibility issues, like the inability to express time before the Unix epoch.

OpenBSD still uses a signed 32-bit integer, which really won't be a problem.. they still have ~29 years until it'll be worth fixing.

It just goes to show that the developers of Unix never expected people would be using it decades later.. 2038 in the 1970's is like, flying cars and aliens with super computers the size of a freckle.

I'm not worried about this problem yet, I don't create any cron/at jobs that far into the future.. and, my pocket schedule isn't that well planned out.

Take care.
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