Hi,
I'm messing with some dates and (being new to ruby), I've come across an interesting problem
I have a new date object
start_date = Date.new 1901, 01, 01
now I can call
start_date.respond_to?(:to_time)
and everything is fine, and I get true back
assert_equal true, start_date.respond_to?(:to_time)
however
time = start_date.to_time
breaks with an Argument out of range error
This is on the version of Ruby on my WinXP machine here at work, (one click installer - cheers for that, so much easier than the hell that is installing on MacOSX)
Any ideas what I should be doing? Looking at the API docs, a Date object shouldn't respond to to_time - indeed I can't find the to_time method - but maybe I'm looking in the wrong place
Sorry if this is a ridiculous message, but I'm kinda interested in how I should approach this - it's someone elses code and I don't want to use a Time object instead of the original date, I think it's a bug in the code (that I found - w00t!), but I want to be sure before I post bug reports etc etc
Kev
Kev Jackson wrote:
Hi,
I'm messing with some dates and (being new to ruby), I've come across an interesting problem
I have a new date object
start_date = Date.new 1901, 01, 01
Interestingly it seems to be a real bug in the code (yes respond to myself but whatever).
I've now discovered that any date prior to 1970 breaks when to_time is called on it.
Nice, so I have to update the code (just unit tests) to use at a minimum 1970 for this test case
Kev
Kev Jackson wrote:
This is on the version of Ruby on my WinXP machine here at work, (one
click installer - cheers for that, so much easier than the hell that is
installing on MacOSX)
What do you mean? Ruby is included in the Mac OS X standard install.
Can't get any easier.
Charles Steinman wrote:
Kev Jackson wrote:
This is on the version of Ruby on my WinXP machine here at work, (one
click installer - cheers for that, so much easier than the hell that is
installing on MacOSX)
What do you mean? Ruby is included in the Mac OS X standard install.
Can't get any easier.
ruby 1.6 is installed as standard, installing ruby 1.8 over a modem so that I can download rails and play with that is not as easy as I'd like. There is an installer now, but it's for Tiger and I'm stuck on Panther 
Kev
Kev Jackson <kevin.jackson@it.fts-vn.com> writes:
Kev Jackson wrote:
I've now discovered that any date prior to 1970 breaks when to_time is
called on it.
... on win32. Complain to your vendor for having an unsigned time format.
···
--
Christian Neukirchen <chneukirchen@gmail.com> http://chneukirchen.org
Tiger also ships with Ruby 1.8.2 installed, just FYI.
James Edward Gray II
···
On Jul 20, 2005, at 9:24 PM, Kev Jackson wrote:
ruby 1.6 is installed as standard, installing ruby 1.8 over a modem so that I can download rails and play with that is not as easy as I'd like. There is an installer now, but it's for Tiger and I'm stuck on Panther
But what's wrong with negative time values?
Unix supports this AFAIK. This with FreeBSD:
$ date -r -1000000
Sat Dec 20 11:13:20 BST 1969
And the big time wraparound occurs at t = 2^31, not t = 2^32:
$ date -r 2147483647
Tue Jan 19 03:14:07 GMT 2038
Regards,
Brian.
···
On Wed, Jul 20, 2005 at 11:46:42PM +0900, Dimitri Aivaliotis wrote:
On 7/20/05, Kev Jackson <kevin.jackson@it.fts-vn.com> wrote:
> I've now discovered that any date prior to 1970 breaks when to_time is
> called on it.
>
That would make sense, since Time represents time since the Epoch.
See http://www.rubycentral.com/ref/ref_c_time.html for further
details.
Christian Neukirchen wrote:
Kev Jackson <kevin.jackson@it.fts-vn.com> writes:
Kev Jackson wrote:
I've now discovered that any date prior to 1970 breaks when to_time is
called on it.
... on win32. Complain to your vendor for having an unsigned time format.
yeah because complaining to Microsoft about their crappy software has always been a winning strategy! I have to use Windows at work, it suprised me that the 1970 date would be significant to Windows in anyway. Presumambly this is something to do with the half-arsed not-quite posix that Windows attempts to be.
Kev
Hmm...never thought of that.
Time.at(-2147483648)
=> Fri Dec 13 21:45:52 CET 1901
It does work...
On my machine (Linux, Ruby 1.8.2), the to_time method isn't in the
standard library: it's a part of facets (I've got version 0.7.2), and
it's defined as follows:
class Date
def to_time(form = :local)
::Time.send(form, year, month, day)
end
end
It also seems to work for me:
start_date = Date.new(1901, 01, 01)
start_date.to_time
=> Fri Dec 13 21:45:52 CET 1901
Maybe the OP could post a few more details about his set-up. Which
version of the one-click installer is it? Or maybe it's a platform
problem (WinXP not supporting negative times)?
- Dimitri
···
On 7/21/05, Brian Candler <B.Candler@pobox.com> wrote:
But what's wrong with negative time values?
Unix supports this AFAIK. This with FreeBSD:
$ date -r -1000000
Sat Dec 20 11:13:20 BST 1969
And the big time wraparound occurs at t = 2^31, not t = 2^32:
$ date -r 2147483647
Tue Jan 19 03:14:07 GMT 2038