Nathan Wiger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> The idea would be twofold:
> 1. time() would still return UNIX epoch time. However, it
> would not be in core, and would not be the primary
> timekeeping method. It would be in Time::Local for
> compatibility (along with localtime and gmtime).
> 2. mjdate() would return MJD. It _would_ be in core, and
> it _would_ be the internal timekeeping method. All
> of the new date functions would be designed to be based
> off of it.
Here's the significant problem that I have with this: It feels very much
like it's putting the cart before the horse. Perl is fundamentally a Unix
language (portable Unix, to a degree). It's core user base has always
been sysadmins and hackers with a Unix-like mindset, regardless of the
platform they're using. As an example, I've written literally hundreds of
scripts that use Unix time in one way or another; it has innumerable
really nice properties and is compatible with all the other programs
written in other languages that I have to interact with.
By comparison, who uses MJD? Practically no one. It's a theoretically
nice time scale, but outside of the astronomy community, how many people
even have any idea what it is?
This appears to be a proposal to replace a *very* well-known time base
with very well-known and commonly-used properties with a time base that
practically no one knows or currently uses just because some of its epoch
properties make slightly more sense. Unless I'm missing something
fumdamental here, this strikes me as a horrible idea.
Unix's time representation format has no fundamental problems that aren't
simple implementation issues. Negative values represent times before 1970
just fine. The range problem is easily solved by making it a 64-bit
value, something that apparently we'd need to do with an MJD-based time
anyway. And everyone already knows how it works and often relies on the
base being consistent with their other applications.
It really doesn't sound like a good idea to change all that.
--
Russ Allbery ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
