Guardian Programmer's Guide

Table Of Contents
Managing Time
Guardian Programmer’s Guide 421922-014
18 - 3
128-Bit, 64-Bit, and 48-Bit Timestamps
12:00 (noon) Greenwich mean time (Julian proleptic calendar). This timestamp
can represent either Greenwich mean time (GMT), local standard time (LST), or
local civil time (LCT). There is no way to examine a Julian timestamp and
determine which time it represents.
Related to the Julian timestamp is a 32-bit Julian day number, giving the number of
days since January 1, 4713 B.C.
48-bit timestamps (returned by the TIMESTAMP procedure) measure the
difference between the current local civil time and midnight at the start of
December 31, 1974. These timestamps are measured in units of 0.01 second.
Use 64-bit Julian timestamps, rather than 48-bit timestamps when developing new
applications on TNS and TNS/R systems. When developing new applications on
TNS/E systems, use 64-bit timestamps unless you need a unique timestamp, in which
case you should use 128-bit timestamps. Both 64-bit and 128-bit timestamps have a
microsecond resolution
.
.
Note. The RCLK instruction ($READCLOCK in TAL) is another source of 64-bit timestamps. It
returns a value representing the local civil time in microseconds since midnight (00:00) on 31
December 1974. Note that this is not a Julian timestamp and therefore it is not transferable
across HP systems. Applications should avoid using the RCLK instruction except where
necessary.