Just noting that the conceptual definition of Duration.MAX and MIN have been in use since Java 8, and I disagree with any change to the current definition.
You cannot successfully negate Long.MIN_VALUE, so there is no requirement that edge cases like this support negation. Stephen On Wed, 8 Oct 2025 at 21:29, Pavel Rappo <[email protected]> wrote: > > In another thread, there's a question on whether we can define > Duration.MIN such that it's not the exact minimum, but rather the > minimum "negatable minimum"? Put differently, can we define > Duration.MIN as Duration.MAX.negated(), where Duration.MAX is > Duration.ofSeconds(Long.MAX_VALUE, 999_999_999)? What are the concerns > with this, if any? > > -Pavel > > On Wed, Sep 3, 2025 at 1:49 PM Pavel Rappo <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > Couldn't recall or quickly find if this was asked before. > > > > I come across this quite often: there doesn’t seem to be a readily > > available maximum value for java.time.Duration -- a value that > > represents the longest possible duration. > > > > I assume there are plenty of homegrown constants out in the wild > > addressing this. Don’t get me wrong: it’s not hard to create one. The > > issue, in my experience, is that it takes time and sometimes > > experimentation. > > > > Unless one reads the Javadoc carefully, it’s not obvious that the > > maximum duration can be constructed as follows: > > > > Duration.of(Long.MAX_VALUE, 999_999_999); > > > > Naturally, one might first try using IDE autocomplete. For example, > > creating a Duration from Long.MAX_VALUE of a large unit -- millennia, > > centuries, decades, etc. -- only to run into ArithmeticException. Only > > when reaching seconds does it finally work: > > > > Duration.ofSeconds(Long.MAX_VALUE); > > > > or > > > > Duration.of(Long.MAX_VALUE, ChronoUnit.SECONDS); > > > > Of course, there’s no practical difference between > > Duration.of(Long.MAX_VALUE, 999_999_999) and > > Duration.ofSeconds(Long.MAX_VALUE). We’re talking about durations on > > the order of 292 billion years, after all. The exact value isn’t the > > problem. The problem is that the values are inconsistent, and arriving > > to them is error-prone. Adding a constant to java.time.Duration would > > simplify things. > > > > -Pavel
