> Dear Folks!
> Does anyone out there know how the Year 2000 problem might impact UNIX
> systems? I'm talking about the representation of years as 2 digits.
> This occurs on some systems (eg MVS), but I was wondering if any
> problems will occur on UNIX as well. I am not a UNIX user myself, so I
> was hoping someone who knows UNIX can enlighten me.
> Thanks a lot,
> Simon Buehring.
Most issues with the year 2000 are really application issues, not operating systems
issues. Unix holds dates and times internally as the number of seconds since 1 January
970 (the epoch). It is only on conversion to a format you and I can use that the century
may get dropped. The programming language function calls within unix all support 4 digit
year data. It is only if an application programmer/designer got lazy (never happens of
course) and only allowed for 2 digit dates that there may be a problem.
Cheers
Mike Purdie