Unix Timestamp Problems

The cluster focuses on pitfalls and limitations of Unix timestamps in programming, including bit width issues, epoch assumptions, leap seconds, precision loss, and references to common falsehoods programmers believe about time.

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#4730
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Keywords

infiniteundo.com UTC POSIX PID GMT github.com UNIX API RTFM RIP timestamps unix timestamp unsigned causality stamp events utc stamps clocks

Sample Comments

da4c30ff Mar 2, 2014 View on HN

What is wrong with standard unix timestamps?

xhgdvjky Jun 15, 2019 View on HN

timestamps are rarely the answer

jhanoncomm Mar 16, 2024 View on HN

Is this about timestamps or is there more to it?

jmcqk6 Mar 1, 2020 View on HN

I"m just going to leave this here: https://infiniteundo.com/post/25326999628/falsehoods-program...

sohn Jun 13, 2012 View on HN

No one, but you probably keep timestamps with seconds.

xorcist Jul 6, 2022 View on HN

Ah! The infamous 33 bit timestamps!

blowski Jul 6, 2022 View on HN

Send it to the very fires of hell from whence it came. Or use 64 bits to store timestamps.

z3t4 Jun 3, 2021 View on HN

We also have a unix timestamp issue coming up.

byteknight Jul 21, 2023 View on HN

Wouldn't those operations reduce the accuracy of the time stamp?

teddyh Jun 2, 2024 View on HN

More Falsehoods programmers believe about time: https://gist.github.com/timvisee/fcda9bbdff88d45cc9061606b4b...>