Re: Emacs current-time-string core dump on 64-bit hosts

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> Cc: bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
> From: Paul Eggert <eggert@CS.UCLA.EDU>
> Date: Sat, 25 Mar 2006 21:25:39 -0800
> 
> Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:
> 
> > previously current-time-string never threw an error, while now it
> > will.
> 
> Hmm, well, it'd be more precise to say something like this:
> 
>    Previously with out-of-range time stamps, current-time-string
>    sometimes dumped core and sometimes had other (somewhat random)
>    behavior.  Now it reliably throws an error.

The core dumps were not mentioned in the documentation, so I doubt
that some code was relying on that.  OTOH, it's quite possible that
some code _does_ rely on the fact that it never threw an error.

> I don't think this change in behavior will be a real problem in
> practice.  The only time stamps affected are those before the year
> -999 or after the year 9999.  Users with old programs won't
> expect such time stamps to work, since historically those time stamps
> never worked on 32-bit systems.

I don't like incompatible changes so close to release, but I'll let
Richard decide.