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    SubjectRe: RFD: x32 ABI system call numbers
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    On Wed, Aug 31, 2011 at 21:18, Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de> wrote:
    > On Wednesday 31 August 2011 09:48:35 Linus Torvalds wrote:
    >> On Wed, Aug 31, 2011 at 9:39 AM, Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de> wrote:
    >> >
    >> > Well, we could chicken out and just use unsigned int for time_t on new
    >> > 32 bit ABIs, which would buy us time until ~2106 before we need to
    >> > convert everything to 64 bit...
    >>
    >> You do realize that there are probably quite a lot of programs that
    >> depend on signed time_t because they really do care about dates before
    >> 1970?
    >
    > Yes, it already occurred to me after I had written the above that we
    > really want it to be signed, especially to allow a meaningful conversion
    > at least one-way between 32 and 64 bit time_t values.

    If you care about dates before 1970, you're using time_t not to store
    the current
    time +/- some epsilon, for a "reasonable small epsilon", but to store real
    dates. That was never a good idea. During the early days of UNIX, when the 1970
    base was chosen, lots of people born before 1902 were still alive...

    Gr{oetje,eeting}s,

                            Geert

    --
    Geert Uytterhoeven -- There's lots of Linux beyond ia32 -- geert@linux-m68k.org

    In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But
    when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like that.
                                    -- Linus Torvalds
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