Re: encode-time doesn't work on epoch + TZ

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Richard Stallman <address@hidden>
> Date: Thu, 07 Aug 2003 02:05:14 -0400
> 
>     (encode-time 0 0 18 31 12 1969 0) gives the following:
> 
>     Debugger entered--Lisp error: (error "Specified time is not 
> representable")
>       encode-time(0 0 18 31 12 1969 0)
>       eval((encode-time 0 0 18 31 12 1969 0))
>       eval-expression((encode-time 0 0 18 31 12 1969 0) nil)
>       call-interactively(eval-expression)
> 
> That one works ok for me.
> 
> However, dates considerably earlier do fail.
> It looks like they fail because mktime cannot handle them.

I think the precise point of failure depends on the time-zone of the
machine that invokes that, since the epoch is defined in UTC.

Machines where time_t is wider than a signed 32-bit int might support
a larger range of valid dates.