On Dec 6, 2007 9:13 PM, Isaac Atilano <aristophrenic at warpmail.net> wrote: [snip] My $0.02: There are two distinct classes of things that need timestamps: [1] times of physical system events, e.g. inode updates [2] times of nonsystem events (calendar, genealogy, mortgage calculators, etc.) A single 32-bit integer is OK for [1] (caveat: embedded systems running continuously for the next 30 years are in for a rude awakening). Your desktop won't be running in 30 years. Sorry, it just won't. A single 32-bit integer is not OK for [2]. Many good examples of this appear in this thread. This is yet just another instance of people using something in a way its designers did not intend it to be used. One solution I heard on the Perl 6 list was to use a 64-bit floating point value for time, and to reset the Epoch to 1 January 2000. I'm not sure what I think about this. J