Here's a wild idea: If the two high order bits of a time_t are 11,...

At this point, I think we should acknowledge that computers are at as level of sophistication that does not require such an approach to the problem. (However, I would not be opposed some type of Pascal variant record formulation which does the same thing.) Please see my proposal within the last week of defining a parallel date_t signed long integer which would be days (rather than seconds) in the UN*X epoch. (The parallel request is that time_t be signed also.) Using -2147483648 to +2147483647 as the bounds of a 32-bit signed long integer I compute that it would span around 5.8 million years either side of Jan 1, 1970. A date_t and time_t pair of signed long integers could be used together to give a meridian day for any interesting epoch and a time within the epoch. The assumed meridian (for existing applications) would be Jan 1, 1970.

Mark

Ron Tolley