--On 22.08.2000 11:18 Uhr -0400 Chris Nandor wrote:
> If there's a good reason to remove localtime(), then fine. But please say
> something more than "web applications don't need it."
Well, I did not really talk about removing it - I know about the backwards
compatibility issues. I know my mail was rather easy to misinterpret ;-)
What I actually wanted to express is that it's fairly useless in many cases
and should be accompanied with useful date/time support in the standard
distribution.
Currently, handling date/time requires finding and using several modules
like Time::Object, Date::Manip and POSIX or Time::Zone for correct
timezones. I'm no C programmer unfortunately, so I could write the
necessary system interfaces for especially the timezone stuff,otherwise I'd
write this myself. I once did a Time::Zoneinfo module which could read
Linux's zoneinfo files but then figured out it'd be better to rely on the
system functions for that - which most systems have, than to repeat that
work.
> Systems have an installed database of time zones? Certainly not all of
> them do. Relying on the system won't solve the problem, it will just make
> it worse. We want time and date stuff to become MORE reliable across ALL
> systems, not less reliable.
Well - I'd actually prefer useful Time/Date manipulations on 80% of the
systems to the current situation. Also, falling back to system resources is
probably better than re-doing everything. For those systems not having
timezone information or complete timezone information those zones would not
be available until somebody installs a zoneinfo package or whatever - where
exactly is the problem there?
--
Markus Peter - SPiN GmbH
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
