OpenEuphoria

Re: We're All Doomed (Programmers, That Is)

• Posted by ags <eu at 531pi.co.nz> Mar 03, 2006
• 466 views

Al Getz wrote:
> 
> Al Getz wrote:
> > Who uses time_t anymore anyway?
> > 
> > 
> > Al
> > 
> > 
> > My bumper sticker: "I brake for LED's"
> 
> 
> Still waiting for an answer :)

Hi Al

I was going to answer this but got side-tracked with work (which is not a bad
thing actually being at work at the time :)

I dug a bit into Linux's header files but got lost in the 10 level deep nested
#include <this.h> where this.h includes that.h etc etc.

I was looking to see whether the define for time_t was an explicit signed int or
the compiler somehow converted that to the machine specific word size.

My guess is that in the world of C 'signed int' means just that, ie 32 bits. 
Upgrading to a 64-bit architecture might not necessarily automatically promote
this to 'signed long'.

So I tend to think there might be cause for concern here.  Just because there's
new programming language being used at that time doesn't mean that it hasn't
actually been written in a 70 year old language.  And even putting the issue of
new applications aside, if (say) Linux is still being used by then (which I'm
sure it will be) then that in itself uses a lot of time_t's for things like the
filesystem etc.

Of course, Linux being open source means that by that stage someone will have
done something about it by then.  In fact I predict by then there will be
secluded monastaries up in the mountains devoted to the maintenance of the GNU
source code.  (And we'll be flying around in our cars ... yeah right).

Gary