On: 2038: Only 21 years away

[pkulak]

Is 2038 the end of a signed int? If so, can't we just make it unsigned and buy ourselves another 70 years or so? I don't know how much of an issue not being able to represent time before 1970 is, but for timestamps that doesn't seem like it would be an issue.

[Zitrax → pkulak]

That would break systems that relies on time stamps earlier than 1970 though.

  int main(void)
  {
      time_t epoch = -100;
      printf("%s", asctime(gmtime(&epoch)));
  }

The above would for example print a time in 1969.

[jayflux → pkulak]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2038_problem explains pretty well why that wouldn't work and other solutions tried