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@maestro.srcc.lsu.edu
(504) 388-6438