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As in the title, I was looking for, but hadn't found. How were time stored and processed before epoch standardizing in 2000?

Piotr
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    Why do you believe Epoch is from 2000? – vidarlo Jan 01 '22 at 22:31
  • There is some information here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2000_problem#Programming_problem – Erik Bennett Jan 02 '22 at 02:07
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_time#History – AlexD Jan 02 '22 at 09:49
  • What makes you think the epoch was only standardized in 2000? I used Linux the first time around 1997 and several other Unices starting 1999, and the epoch was definitely already standardized at that time. I am pretty sure it was already standardized in POSIX-1988, and possibly all the way to the first Unix release in 1970. – Jörg W Mittag Jan 02 '22 at 12:49

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UNIX epoch began 1970-01-01, a date approximately when it was named such and escaped Bell Labs. NTP era 0 has been 1900-01-01 since at least v0 circa 1985. These and other time scales were well established on UNIX systems, before Linus sent the "just a hobby" email about Linux on 1991-08-25.

Linux 0.01 does not have many time functions in the kernel. Mostly converting real time clock time values into a usable integer so the boot time can be established. Presumably UNIX epoch, given the "- 70" done to the year, and the comments wondering about the choice of 1970.

See man 7 time for a list of time functions on a modern Linux system.

John Mahowald
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  • the question was before not after – djdomi Jan 02 '22 at 09:19
  • @djdomi: There is no "before". The epoch was standardized pretty much as soon as Unix existed. In the beginning, there was only one implementation anyway, so there was nothing to standardize. And when forks and clones appeared, they copied what the original did. – Jörg W Mittag Jan 02 '22 at 12:53
  • yes but the first computer were released before unix existed. and i think thats what the real request is – djdomi Jan 02 '22 at 13:34