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Versatile/Robust Timestamp

Posted: Fri Sep 24, 2010 12:38 pm
by MythX
I have begun a project that will track events in history. These events may have happened yesterday, or back in the days of the dinosaurs. Obviously functions like strtotime() and date() aren't going to work across the board. I have thought about storing all dates within varchar fields and then writing some functions of my own to handle dates such as: 1/1/1901at 2:01pm to 4.5 billion years ago. I was wondering if anyone has already invented the wheel though. If not, I'd be happy to do so and post my work for everyone else. Also, if anyone has any ideas on how to proceed with this, I would appreciate the help.

Thanks

Jason

Re: Versatile/Robust Timestamp

Posted: Fri Sep 24, 2010 12:55 pm
by John Cartwright
That certainly sounds like an interesting challenge, but impossible to make accurate (considering calenders have evolved, Julian, Gregorian, etc).

See http://askville.amazon.com/Long-ago-mil ... d=29657107 for a good explanation on why this is difficult.