std.datetime questions

[Jonathan M Davis]

On Friday, March 11, 2011 12:29:49 Nicholas wrote:
> I just started using the new std.datetime.  Two things I find strange that
> maybe someone can explain are:
> 
> 
> 1) EST timezone displays GMT+0500 instead of -0500 when using any of the
> toString functions.  Didn't check other negative timezones.

If it does, that's a bug. Please report it with appropriate details as to what 
OS you're using (that matters a lot for std.datetime) and which time zone class 
you were using and whatnot (probably LocalTime unless you were specifically 
trying to use another time zone).

> 2) The UTC time for std.file's DirEntry uses milliseconds, so when
> converting SysTime to UTC, I had to use toUnixTime and then I had to
> multiple the result by 1000.

std.file.DirEntry should have older functions which use d_time and newer ones 
which use SysTime. No conversion should be necessary. There _are_ functions in 
std.datetime for converting between d_time and SysTime if you need to (they'll 
go away when std.date does) if you need to convert between those two though. It 
sounds like you're using the d_time versions of DirEntry's functions. Just use 
the SysTime versions and you won't need to do any converting (the older 
functions are going to go when std.date does as well).

> Also, I found it strange that this wouldn't work:
> 
> auto stime = SysTime( ... );
> long timetest = stime.toUnixTime() * 1000; //doesn't work
> 
> I had to do:
> 
> timetest = stime.toUnixTime();
> timetest *= 1000;

My guess would be is what's happening is that time_t can't handle being 
multiplied by 1000. long can. In the first case, you're multiplying the time_t, 
not a long. In the second, you're multiplying a long.

> I believe there's also a problem with the time in SysTime when you specify
> a timezone and set the time to 0 in the constructor, e.g. SysTime(
> DateTime( 2011, 3, 11 ), TimeZone( "America/New_York" ) ), in that it
> forces the time to GMT instead of the specified local time.  I'll have to
> double check but I know it worked when I used a non-zero time.

You're going to need to be more specific. I don't understand what you're saying 
well enough to try and reproduce it, let alone fix it if there's a problem.

Regardless, if you find any bugs in std.datetime, _please_ report them. As far as 
I know, it's bug free. There are no outstanding bugs on it. It _has_ been 
thoroughly tested (and I've actually been  working on improving the unit tests), 
but it's mostly been used in Linux in the America/Los_Angeles time zone, and I 
haven't tested every time zone under the sun. So, I may have missed something.

- Jonathan M Davis