NOTICE: This version of the NSF Unidata web site (archive.unidata.ucar.edu) is no longer being updated.
Current content can be found at unidata.ucar.edu.
To learn about what's going on, see About the Archive Site.
NOTICE: This version of the NSF Unidata web site (archive.unidata.ucar.edu) is no longer being updated.
Current content can be found at unidata.ucar.edu.
To learn about what's going on, see About the Archive Site.
It seems that we will always run out of resolution space as certain disciplines progress. Why not do what IEEE did with numbers? Have two representations. (1) is some existing type of time which is easy to represent in 8 bytes of data - pick your best, seconds since worm crawls or minutes since last snow but something geared toward the HUMAN time reference. (2) For those who need extended time representation take a lesson from good-ole BCD arithmetic. Come up with an arbitrary precision time in some units (you applied scientists figure out what units - I don't care). You could even do this with BCD since most C++ compilers include BCD extensions. Since BCD is the only data type >8 bytes that most languages easily work with it has some commonality and perhaps "portability" (don't start yelling about portable - i know i know). regards, david wilensky cia@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (504) 388-6438
netcdfgroup archives: