Re: RFC 99 (v4) Standardize ALL Perl platforms on UNIX epoch

----- Original Message -----
From: "Perl6 RFC Librarian" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Cc: <[email protected]>
Sent: Thursday, September 28, 2000 14:37
Subject: RFC 99 (v4) Standardize ALL Perl platforms on UNIX epoch


> The issue is still open as to whether or not time should be maintained
> internally via TAI or UTC. Both have their pros and cons. TAI is more
> accurate, but does not have any close correlation to many platforms. UTC
> has leap-second trickery, but has the distinct advantage that it would
> remain consistent with UNIX platforms. This means C<time> would appear
> unchanged to all the Linux hackers, which is probably a good thing.

Hmm... Isn't TAI->UTC RELATIVELY easy, but has accuracy loss? (I could be
misinformed...) I'd just do two things, therefore:

1. Define $time->tai (and the corresponding $time->utc) routine...

2. STORE time as TAI (for accuracy), but RETURN it in "integer" SCALAR
context (I assume other object methods return string SCALARS) as UTC (for
consistency). Of course, specifying $time->tai overrides this, and the UTC
value may be cached as needed to make this faster.

--
Curtis Jewell   http://www.geocities.com/curtis_whalen/  [email protected]
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