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Re: Fifth draft of the Y2038 design document
On Wed, 22 Feb 2017, Zack Weinberg wrote:
> Speaking of struct timespec, though, why does this spec not consider
> the possibility of changing the type of 'tv_nsec' to a new typedef,
> say nsec_t, which can vary between 32- and 64-bit modes? Yes, this
> requires a change in POSIX (and ISO C as well now, unfortunately), but
> one that would be a good idea *anyway*.
That's a gratuitous incompatibility with the existing standards (see Rich
Felker passim, e.g. bug 16437). Adding typedefs makes sense when there is
a use for storing values that cannot be represented in the current type.
But long is guaranteed to be able to store all valid tv_nsec values (plus
the extra value UTIME_NOW and UTIME_OMIT).
--
Joseph S. Myers
joseph@codesourcery.com