On Tue, Aug 12, 2008 at 06:43:49PM -0500, Andrew Berg wrote: > Time for computers is generally just the number of seconds since January 1, > 1970 at 12:00:00 UTC if I'm not mistaken. Date formats are derived from that > and displayed according to the user's preference.
Would that it were that simple. The epoch (time 0) means different times in different OSes. Unix uses the above, Microsoft products use another, VMS system time is the quadword number of nanoseconds since some time on some date in (IIRC) November, 1858 (associated with some astronomical catalog), etc. SQL has its own ideas about how to measure time regardless what your OS believes. Even on the same OS you may find different sets of functions that work with different representations and may even use different epochs. It's a valid point that how the machine counts time and how various programs represent time as text are two different matters, and that typically the OS presents time in a form that makes arithmetic easy and the userspace program is responsible for making it comprehensible to humans. Time is a mess, dates doubly so. That's why I usually write something like either 13-Aug-2008 or 20080813T093730 even if it does make people stop and think. -- Mark H. Wood, Lead System Programmer [EMAIL PROTECTED] Typically when a software vendor says that a product is "intuitive" he means the exact opposite.
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