[Typo3-dev] Dates in non-UNIX format

[Martin Seebach]

David Bruehlmeier wrote:

>  
>
>>(ADOdb date library)
>>
>
>Sorry for that! It was by no means meant to offend you. To be honest, I have
>not spent much time investigating the ADOdb suggestion, since I figured it
>would
>
>a) need an external library to interpret an internal data type and
>b) doesn't use an international standard which I think would be a good
>practice for a totally new data type.
>  
>
I think inventing a whole new dateconcept is very wrong, and would make 
integration very difficult.

The widely recognized alternative to the current unix time format is to 
use a signed 64 bit integer instead of the current 32 bit. This covers 
back some twenty times the age of the universe, and, well, the same 
(minus 30 years ;) ) ahead. 64 bit ought to be enough for anybody.

The most obvious advantage is the direct backwards compatibiality. Drop 
a 32 bit date in the 64 bit field, and everything behaves the way you 
want it to. Sorting works out of the box.

As a bonus, while covering a much wider range than the proposed format, 
it is only half the size (64 vs. 17*8 = 136). Also, when 64 bit 
computers prevail over the next few years, sorting and seraching on the 
field will be faster.

To answer your concerns:
a) To use the proposed format, some functionality would have to be added 
to the TYPO3 core anyway. In the spirit of opensource development, why 
not just grab the relevant functions from ADOdb and throw them in?
b) The proposed adjustments to ISO8601 will break the standard anyway. 
And using 64 bits instead of 32 bits certainly is an as much of a 
standard as we need: http://www.gnu.org/software/year2000.html

Venlig hilsen
Martin Seebach

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.typo3.org/pipermail/typo3-dev/attachments/20041124/8ed05827/attachment.htm>