On Wed, Sep 22, 1999 at 03:18:20PM +1000, Gennette Bruce wrote: > > -----Original Message----- > > From: Mike Mansheim [SMTP:mike_mansheim@YAHOO.COM] > > > > May I ask why DOS programs will not work after 2038?? > > > > --- Wes Johnston wrote: > > > DOS will continue to work until 2038... and LOTS of > > > C programs will stop > > > working then too. > > > > > Microsoft counts seconds from an arbitrary starting date (I think it is > 1-1-1980) and calculates the date and time from that number. Once the number > field is filled the dates will roll-over - this will happen in 2038, then > all old DOS programs are on their own. > There is the same problem in all 32-bit Unix'es and their clones. time_t is unsigned integer, and it returns number of seconds since 1-1-1970. Additionally time_t is used to store dite in filesystems, so it is not so easy to fix it :-(. When I asked about it on one of Linux mailing list, the answer was: Up to this time we all will upgrade to 64-bit architectures :-)))). -- Wojciech Zabolotny http://www.ise.pw.edu.pl/~wzab http://www.debian.org Use Linux - save your data and time