Re: date overflow in year 2038

[Dr. David Alan Gilbert]

* James Youngman (address@hidden) wrote:
> On Sat, Feb 14, 2009 at 3:45 AM, David M. Dowdle
> <address@hidden> wrote:
> >
> > I'd rank this as low priority, but people doing things like 30 year mortages
> > will be hitting this already.
> >
> 
> Mortgage calculations probably shouldn't be using time_t anyway; use
> of time_t for future calculations assumes that we already know how
> long each year is going to be, to the nearest second[1].    Mortgage
> agreements on the other hand specify dates in civil time and therefore
> the duration of the agreement in seconds can't be precisely known when
> the agreement is signed.

<snip>

> [1] ... or that the precise alignment between future values of time_t
> and calendar time doesn't matter much

Well indeed; I reckon a difference of 1 second over a 25 year mortgage
on a million $ mortgage (at 5%) would be about 13c difference in the
amount of interest - and that assumes you weren't paying any capital
back, so I'm not sure it's that important (especially if they were
careful in how they worded the agreement).

Dave

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