[snip] > It is always a problem to lump things with different semantics into > the same type :-) What I'm arguing is that there should be only one > fixed-duration offset datatype and it should be in terms of (seconds, > picoseconds). > Other fixed durations can be easily defined in terms of this > datatype. > I'm still not sure that you actually want base-dependent offsets, but > again they can be easily defined on top of the fixed duration > datatype. And they should be specified separately from the base > functionality. [snip]
I wrote a reply, but I don't really have anything new to say over what's been said already, so I'll keep it brief instead. The copy of ISO8601 that I looked at is here: http://www.astroclark.freeserve.co.uk/iso8601/index.htm, but from what you said I'm guessing you're looking at a different version. Anyway, to sum up: - I agree that there should be a constant-duration time offset type. However, TimeDiff does actually fuction perfectly well as one at the moment, since diffClockTimes only fills in the seconds and picoseconds fields. - I believe a reasonable interpretation of the other fields of TimeDiff is as base-dependent offsets. The current implementation in GHC doesn't do this, but you can use TimeExts which does. - Our implementation of ClockTime uses C's gettimeofday(), which apparently is based a broken definition of the epoch. Oh well :-) Cheers, Simon _______________________________________________ Haskell mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell