age calculation on Windows vs Mac

[Ken Ray]

On Jul 19, 2011, at 11:40 AM, Pete wrote:

> Hi Andre,
> I don't have a definitive answer for you but this sounds like it is
> connected to "epoch" dates which are the number of days since Jan 1, 1970.
> I'm guessing that somewhere along the line, your dates are being converted
> to the epoch format on the WIndows platform that would certainly cause a
> problem for dates prior to 1970.  I don't know why that would be different
> in Windows than OS X.

I'm not sure either, since on Mac OS 9 whenever a date got messed up it would always be set to "12/31/1969" (the day before the Epoch). For Windows, though, this is actually documented under the 'convert' command:

"Note:  The range of dates that the convertcommand can handle is limited by the operating system's date routines. In particular, Windows systems are limited to dates after 1/1/1970."

You'll have to use some other method to calculate your dates, unfortunately. FYI: Here's the info on the Unix Epoch:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_time


Ken Ray
Sons of Thunder Software, Inc.
Email: kray at sonsothunder.com
Web Site: http://www.sonsothunder.com/