Re: Fwd: Re: unix epoch data wrapping

[Ethan M. <merritt@u.washington.edu>]

On Monday 29 March 2010, pl...@pi... wrote:

> If gnuplot could work around the instability in the libraries it uses, 
> this would seem preferable to burdening users with playing around with 
> specific string handling. I'd regard that as a workaround rather than a 
> solution.

You have missed, or misunderstood, an earlier posting.
The gnuplot time code does not depend on an external library.
I posted the code (from time.c) that it uses to interpret the %y format.
The gnuplot code was written last century, and adheres to the closest
thing to a "standard" that was available at the time.  It has not
changed since then, which one can view as backwards consistency or
continued foolishness as the case may be.

I pointed out the shifting sands of time-handling in libc not to 
explain gnuplot's behaviour, but just as a additional bit of evidence
that the whole area is frought with inconsistency.

	Ethan