On: 'Japan's millennium bug' ahead of Akihito's abdica...

[pwim]

Interestingly, sometimes the system is used for future dates. For instance, my drivers license expires in September of H.31, which I guess will never happen now.

[samatman → pwim]

Does this imply that the driver's license becomes invalid and must be replaced with one in the new date system?

Real question

[tonysdg → samatman]

Or -- perhaps more intriguingly -- given that the date in question will never occur, is it valid until the end of time?

Philosophically it's a rather fun question, but practically they'll probably just honor it until the corresponding date of the new era.

[h1d → samatman]

It will stay valid. Consider having have to replace millions and millions right after the swap, it will be chaos. The system is simply stupid, not even citizens want it.