Jacques Hausser (who is not Jacque) wrote:
> But I can nevertheless say that I did set my computer (Mac OS X)
> to different time zones and the seconds didn't change accordingly...
> they seem trustable within a computer.
The engine's internal clock is initialized when the engine starts up, so
if you quit before you change your time zone the seconds will be
reliable for comparisons across time zones.
Here's a quick test I just did to verify this:
At 7:01AM PST I got these values:
Seconds: 1264518037
Internet Date: Tue, 26 Jan 2010 07:01:02 -0800
Then I quit Rev, opened my System Control Panel, changed my location to
Brisbane AU, restarted Rev, and got these:
Seconds: 1264518145
Internet Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2010 01:02:09 +1000
While the difference in global time is several hours, the difference in
the seconds is merely 108, roughly the amount of time I spent quitting
and changing my system's location.
FWIW, I also tried this without quitting Rev in between, and apparently
it does not update the time zone until you restart.
So it appears the seconds are indeed useful for comparing times and
dates across time zones, provided the time zone does not change while
the engine is running.
Personally, I prefer the Internet date format because it's
human-readable. It also works at the same level of granularity
(seconds) but carries the additional benefit of storing the time zone it
was acquired in.
The latter may not be useful for many apps, but I have one case where I
need to know where people are in addition to when they perform a given
action, and having the GMT offset embedded in the string helps me narrow
that down.
There is an unfortunate implication with this: because the engine needs
to be restarted to update the GMT offset of its internal clock, this
means that automatic changes to time zones like moving from PST to PDT
will be ignored by the engine.
Anyone know if there's an RQCC request for that?
--
Richard Gaskin
Fourth World
Rev training and consulting: http://www.fourthworld.com
Webzine for Rev developers: http://www.revjournal.com
revJournal blog: http://revjournal.com/blog.irv
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