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just to add to the examples here: last week i was writing code to handle calibration data from seismic detectors. these are connected to GPS receivers and so h

just to add to the examples here: last week i was writing code to handle calibration data from seismic detectors. these are connected to GPS receivers and so have pretty accurate times. yet when i triggered a calibration it would start 1 minute in the past. somehow the receiver was moving back in time before starting the calibration.... ...or ntpd on the test computer had failed and the machine was a minute fast :o) so the code to search for data now looks backwards in time as well as forwards. incidentally, does anyone know of a really good API for time (including calendars etc)? python's (which is largely a thin layer over C) is a horrible mess, for example.

roel_v 15y ago
boost::date_time. I've cursed at it in the beginning, but it does things the Right Way, and I've been saved a number of times by its fighting back against shortcuts (like using Unix time - the issues identified in the article are real and a good summary, but the solution only works for the case where you need to work within a limited time span, from 1970 until a few decades into this century.)
- exDM69 15y ago
  C++0x standard library is pretty nice too. std::chrono and std::thread work nicely together. Right now I'm working with C, pthreads and struct timespec's and it makes me wish for a good time handling library.
njl 15y ago
I haven't played with it much, but the dateutil[1] package seems to do some nice stuff. [1] http://labix.org/python-dateutil http://labix.org/python-dateutil
masklinn 15y ago
> incidentally, does anyone know of a really good API for time (including calendars etc)? python's (which is largely a thin layer over C) is a horrible mess, for example. The only date & time API I've ever seen praised is Joda (JDK/Java library). Joda's author went on to redesign it from scratch (though with inspiration from his work on Joda) for JSR-310, Java's new Date and Time API.
rvkennedy 15y ago
Watch out for GPS time: it ignores leap seconds, and is currently, exactly fifteen seconds ahead of UTC.
- andrewcooke 15y ago
  thanks. currently everything is as insensitive to time as possible (during calibration the data are tagged, so i look for the block of tagged data near the correct time).

roel_v 15y ago

boost::date_time. I've cursed at it in the beginning, but it does things the Right Way, and I've been saved a number of times by its fighting back against shortcuts (like using Unix time - the issues identified in the article are real and a good summary, but the solution only works for the case where you need to work within a limited time span, from 1970 until a few decades into this century.)

exDM69 15y ago
C++0x standard library is pretty nice too. std::chrono and std::thread work nicely together. Right now I'm working with C, pthreads and struct timespec's and it makes me wish for a good time handling library.

njl 15y ago

I haven't played with it much, but the dateutil[1] package seems to do some nice stuff. [1] http://labix.org/python-dateutil http://labix.org/python-dateutil

masklinn 15y ago

> incidentally, does anyone know of a really good API for time (including calendars etc)? python's (which is largely a thin layer over C) is a horrible mess, for example. The only date & time API I've ever seen praised is Joda (JDK/Java library). Joda's author went on to redesign it from scratch (though with inspiration from his work on Joda) for JSR-310, Java's new Date and Time API.

rvkennedy 15y ago

Watch out for GPS time: it ignores leap seconds, and is currently, exactly fifteen seconds ahead of UTC.

andrewcooke 15y ago
thanks. currently everything is as insensitive to time as possible (during calibration the data are tagged, so i look for the block of tagged data near the correct time).