Re: Apple Inc. says Apple II OK w/year 2000

[lwv26@cas.org (Larry W. Virden)]

According to John Bowling <johnlb@primenet.com>:
:There are some problems possible with software.  If it's written in C
:(possibly other languages also) and uses time routines, it does not
:know what century it is.  It's up to the programmer to have written
:the software in a way that makes it select the correct century.  Some
:software will still be saying 19.. after 1999 is over.  I would expect

Things are much more complex that expressed here of course.

The situation, regardless of the language used, is that if a software
package currently only uses the last 2 digits of the year, and depends
on comparing that value with the current year, again looking at the
last 2 digits, then the software package has a problem.  The alternative
but similar problem is software which looks at the current year's last
two digits and compares it against some other date.  A third possible
problem is software which prepends a '19' to the front of the current
year's last 2 digits.  In C, many programmers add 1900 to the value
in the tm structure.  This code will continue to work.
A fourth possible problem is code which picks up the current year and
attempts to validate it against some series of tests which expect
the current year to be 19xx or possibly something earlier.

Being in C has nothing to do with it - folks were able to write
code correctly in any language for some time now.

-- 
:s Larry W. Virden                 INET: lvirden@cas.org
:s <URL:http://www.teraform.com/%7Elvirden/> <*> O- "We are all Kosh."
:s Unless explicitly stated to the contrary, nothing in this posting should
:s be construed as representing my employer's opinions.