Re: Software Engineering News Brief

[Dave Sparks <Dave.Sparks@sisyphus.demon.co.uk>]

>>>>> "RD" == Robert Dewar <dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu> writes:

  RD> ...

  RD> Also, dates that go outside the Ada range are tricky for another
  RD> reason, since they need geopolitical normalization in any case. The
  RD> question of whether a year is a leap year or not is not a scientific
  RD> or astronomical one, it is a political one, since it depends on the
  RD> laws of the country involved. All countries agree for the Ada range
  RD> of dates, but when you wander outside this range, countries will
  RD> disagree unless they change their laws. Again, deciding whether you
  RD> want the date according to the current law, or according to some
  RD> other scheme, is surely something a program must decide for itself.

According to <ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/pub/tzdata95i.tar.gz>

# Catholic Romania switched from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar on
# on 1919 Mar 18.  Greek Orthodox Romania switched on 1920 Mar 18.

(sic).  These dates seem to be within the ADA range.  The same
source gives other countries (including Russia) which did not
change until after 1900.

-- 
        Dave.Sparks@sisyphus.demon.co.uk        (Staffordshire, England)