(moved to -hackers, since I don't have posting privileges on -general)
> I've suggested before that timestamp output should round the timestamp
> value to two fractional digits *before* breaking it down into year/
> month/etc. Seems like this is a perfect example of the necessity
> for that. Thomas, what say you?
Well, that is a good idea to solve the "hidden digits problem",
introducing instead a new "lost digits feature". But I've been hoping to
hear a suggestion on how to allow a variable number of digits, without
cluttering things up with output values ending up with a bunch of 9's at
the end.
When I first implemented the non-Unix-time date/time types, I was
worried that the floating point math libraries on *some* of the two
dozen platforms we support would tend to print out .9999... values
(having seen this behavior *way* too often on older Unix boxes). But
I've never actually asked folks to run tests, since I was just happy
that the floating point implementation worked well enough to go into
production.
Thoughts?
- Thomas