Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schinde...@gmx.de> writes: >> Given that the function returns the value obtained from >> approxidate(), which is approxidate_careful() in disguise, time_t is >> not as appropriate as timestamp_t, no? >> >> IOW, what if time_t were narrower than timestamp_t? > > Riiiight. From the patch, I had assumed that the return type of > `approxidate()` is `time_t`, but it is `timestamp_t`.
Yes, but if we dig a bit deeper, it turns out that the return value of this function is used at only one place, to be compared with the .st_mtime field. So for this change to truly be consisent, not just the function needs to return timestamp_t, but also its sole caller needs to check if its return value exceeds the maximum span that is expressible with the platform's time_t (and if so, treat the expiration to be "infinity- never expire"), or something like that.
