[Vm-dev] Year 2037 problem

[David T. Lewis]

On Wed, May 14, 2014 at 05:34:42PM -0700, Casey Ransberger wrote:
> 
> Below. 
> 
> > On May 13, 2014, at 10:30 AM, Eliot Miranda <eliot.miranda at gmail.com> wrote:
> > 
> > The [Cog] vms and the interpreter provide a 64 bit microseconds from 1901 primitive which is good for > 30,000 years.
> 
> Where's the method in VMMaker? Maybe I'll leave a nice comment for the poor sap who gets the bug in 30,000 years:D
> 

There are two primitives available in all current VMs:

   primitiveUTCMicrosecondClock
       "Answer the UTC microseconds since the Smalltalk epoch. The value is
       derived from the Posix epoch (see primitiveUTCMicrosecondClock) with a
       constant offset corresponding to elapsed microseconds between the two
       epochs according to RFC 868."

   primitiveUtcWithOffset
       "Answer an array with UTC microseconds since the Posix epoch and
       the current seconds offset from GMT in the local time zone. An empty
       two element array may be supplied as a parameter.
       This is a named (not numbered) primitive in the null module (ie the VM)"

Dave