Re: Sniping on the List

On Nov 17, 2011, at 11:07 AM, Stuart Dallas wrote: > On 17 Nov 2011, at 16:01, Tedd Sperling wrote: > To all: >> >> Okay, so now that we have had people reply, here's my take. >> >> The Unix timestamp started on 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 -- and that was a Thursday. >> >> The second before (i.e., 31 December, 1969 23:59:59:59 + 0000) was null, which was >> Wednesday. > > I take issue with this. The second before was -1 seconds from the epoch. Null is the absence of > a value, so you can't get to null by simple arithmetic. I learnt about negative numbers from > the Greeks. And no, I'm not going to comment on their current mathematical difficulties. > > Hmm. > > D'oh! > > But the point still stands: -1 !== null. > > -Stuart Leave it to you to get all Greek on me. :-) Consider this -- do you think the second before the "Big Bang" was negative or null? Likewise, the Unix timestamp was defined to start at a specific point in time -- it does not address/define what time came before. Thus, what came before was not negative, but rather 'undefined'. I claim 'null' is a better fit for 'undefined' than negative -- plus it works. For example, if you push '-1' though strtotime(-1), you'll get Wednesday only one day a week -- whereas 'null' works every time. My point stands: null == Wednesday. :-) Cheers, tedd _____________________ tedd@sperling.com http://sperling.com