ANSI C date & time library functions.

[bdm659 at csc.anu.oz]

In article <1990Feb9.183316.24925 at utzoo.uucp>, henry at utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes:
>
> Unless this changed since the Oct 88 draft, time_t is not constrained to
> be a scalar type, only to be an arithmetic type.  That is, it could be
> floating-point.

It's the same in the Dec 1988 draft.

>                  It also might be some implementation-specific type like
> "long long int".

Are you sure about that?  Section 3.1.2.5 claims to give a complete list
of arithmetic types.  Shouldn't we take "arithmetic type" as meaning "one
of the types this Standard says are arithmetic types"?  I can't find any
specific guidelines on this matter in the Standard, though Section 3.3.3.4
of the Rationale has this to say about the size_t type:
    "The type of sizeof, whatever it is, is published (in the library
     header <stddef.h>) as size_t, since it is useful for the programmer
     to be able to refer to this type.  This requirement implicitly
     restricts size_t to be a synonym for an *existing* unsigned integer
     type, thus quashing any notion that the largest declarable object
     might be too big to span even with an unsigned long."  [my emphasis]

Brendan McKay.  bdm at anucsd.oz(.au)  or bdm659 at csc1.anu.oz(.au)
terrorist: n. an individual who behaves like a government