Re: Synchronizing on File Formating

On Wed, 27 Jul 2005 13:00:31 -0400, Wolfgang Keller <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> A. Timestamp values
> Can this be true? [format-v2.txt]:
>
> "Timestamps will be stored as 32 bit, little endian, unsigned integers,
>    representing the number of seconds since Midnight, January 1, 1970,    
>    GMT. (This is equivalent to the time_t type on Windows and POSIX."
>
> As I understood "time_t" type, it is a long integer showing  
> milliseconds, not seconds. I'ld be happy with a "second" granularity in  
> pws files (it makes the format 1000-year prove!) but the format  
> definition should be made consistent.
>

Hi Wolfgang,

No, both Windows and POSIX define time_t to be in seconds, exactly as
defined above. On the Macintosh, time_t is also in seconds, but using a
different epoch, starting in 1904. So, on the Macintosh, you need to
adjust by 2082844800 seconds, if you intend to use the ISO C functions
for time conversion (such as localtime()).

As a side note, ISO C does not define the format of time_t, so an
implementation that used millisecond values would be ISO C compliant,
just not POSIX compliant.

>
> B. Password Life Time
> It is open in format definition whether this field expresses a timepoint  
> or a time span. I assume the former.
>
> --> I am using an "epoch" timepoint for values
>

IIRC, no implementation supports this field yet, so go ahead, make a
decision, and document it. My preference for this field would be a
time difference in seconds. That would make the field independent of
the last modification time. E.g., it could be 90*86400 if the password
expired after 90 days.

>
> D. Unicode Option
>
> --> I use UTF-8 text field interpretation if and only if there is a  
> substring "B 24 1" in the options string
>

Right.

Frank

-- 
Frank Pilhofer, [email protected]


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