It seems that we will always run out of resolution space as certain
disciplines progress. Why not do what IEEE did with numbers?
Have two representations. (1) is some existing type of time which is
easy to represent in 8 bytes of data - pick your best, seconds since
worm crawls or minutes since last snow but something geared toward the
HUMAN time reference. (2) For those who need extended time representation
take a lesson from good-ole BCD arithmetic. Come up with an arbitrary
precision time in some units (you applied scientists figure out what
units - I don't care). You could even do this with BCD since most
C++ compilers include BCD extensions.
Since BCD is the only data type >8 bytes that most languages easily
work with it has some commonality and perhaps "portability" (don't
start yelling about portable - i know i know).
regards,
david wilensky
cia@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
(504) 388-6438
