Followup to: <20021027214913.GA17533@clusterfs.com>
By author: Andreas Dilger <adilger@clusterfs.com>
In newsgroup: linux.dev.kernel
>
> 3) The fields you are usurping in struct stat are actually there for the
> Y2038 problem (when time_t wraps). At least that's what Ted said when
> we were looking into nsec times for ext2/3. Granted, we may all be
> using 64-bit systems by 2038... I've always thought 64 bits is much
> to large for time_t, so we could always use 20 or 30 bits for sub-second
> times, and the remaining bits for extending time_t at the high end,
> and mask those off for now, but that is a separate issue...
>
64-bit time_t is nice because you don't *ever* need to worry about
overflow; it's capable of handling times on a galactic lifespan
scale. It's overkill, of course, but it's the *right* kind of
overkill.
We probably need to revamp struct stat anyway, to support a larger
dev_t, and possibly a larger ino_t (we should account for 64-bit ino_t
at least if we have to redesign the structure.) At that point I would
really like to advocate for int64_t ts_sec and uint32_t ts_nsec and
quite possibly a int32_t ts_taidelta to deal with leap seconds... I'd
personally like struct timespec to look like the above everywhere.
-hpa
-- <hpa@transmeta.com> at work, <hpa@zytor.com> in private! "Unix gives you enough rope to shoot yourself in the foot." http://www.zytor.com/~hpa/puzzle.txt <amsp@zytor.com> - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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