ml>> this is true, too... i had stuff that i had tested and tested and
 ml>> tested and still had problems... once i really started looking at it,
 ml>> i was able to see where the problem really was and fix it... however,
 ml>> i know that some of my stuff will break when 2100 rolls around but
 ml>> that was a conscience decision to go that path...

 LE> Well *anything* DOS based will break on Jan 1, 2100. And if it
 LE> doesn't, it *has* to break on Jan 1, 2108.

hehehe, well, i guess my decision isn't such a bad one afterall... it was
mainly based on the likely same decision that was made by coders back in
the 70's and 80's... "this code most likely won't be running when y2k
comes around"... :wink:

 LE> You see, MS-DOS stores the file date as a 7-bit field. Which
 LE> gives a range of 0-127. It's the offset from 1980.

i wrote a menuing program, at one time, that adjusted its epoch(?) as the
dates moved further from the machine's epoch... looking at an almanac, one
can easily see that the pattern of days in the calendar repeats after so
many... kinda of like the lunar eclipse cycles that start repeating every
47 years...

 LE> Most file date handling stuff for DOS doesn't know what to do
 LE> with years past 2099. So the year display will get very weird
 LE> then.

hehe, and i'm still looking at stuff that'll go belly up in 2038...

 LE> MS chose not to support dates past 2099, because 2100 *isn't*
 LE> a leap year. So come Mar 1, 2100 the computer would think it
 LE> was Feb 29. Oops.

whether or not m$ chose to support them, following the leap year rules,
2100 isn't a leap year and any program that would think it is is very
broken...

 LE> And of course, Dec 31, 2107 will be a *real* pain. Try setting
 LE> a DOS system to one of the "critical" dates and watch the fun.
 LE> Note that you can't use the Date command to set a date past
 LE> Dec 31, 2099. You have to write your own program to use the low
 LE> level system calls.

doable... but i'm not aware of the problem with dec 31, 2107... other than
it being the last one before 2108 rolls around...

actually, i may have this stuff written down somewhere... johnny 5 used to
say "need more input" but the models after that are now saying
"too much input!"...

)\/(ark