Comment On It's a Float. It's a Long. It's SUPERDATE!

Hey, he's using nearly only primitive types, must be hella efficient musn't it?

And let me guess, all these underscore-prefixed variables are... like... constants? or are they merely private instance variables?

[:|]

OMG... Convert has a ToDateTime method that takes a float... good grief

holy efficient............so like.....say 20 instances of the object call their GetDisplayValue function...............now we have 100 variables, weeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!  That's what this thing must be......it's a variable-making machine!

redtetrahedron:

OMG... Convert has a ToDateTime method that takes a float...

Mike R:

What I can't figure out is why he's converting to decimal, then to double at all.



I can sort of understand the (whatever)-long-datetime If for some
reason he wanted to truncate the time part of the datetime. But to get
a locale-specific string representation of just the date requires only
a single character in the format string. "d" or "D" depending on
whether you want short or long format.

loneprogrammer:

Hey um... where did the Preview button go?

Send out the search parties, it's missing!

Since it was completely buggy and more than likely wouldn't've been fixed, it was merely removed.

If you want some kind of preview, write in HTML and switch to design view .

masklinn:

loneprogrammer:

Hey um... where did the Preview button go?

Send out the search parties, it's missing!

Since it was completely buggy and more than likely wouldn't've been fixed, it was merely removed.

If you want some kind of preview, write in HTML and switch to design view .

Ok. Yes. That was the quote. Now for my reply, which I had put beneath the quotation, but which got completely undisplayed.

	"LT"!--
      "LT"input type="submit" name="_ctl0:PostForm:PreviewButton" value=" Preview > " onclick="if (typeof(Page_ClientValidate) == 'function') Page_ClientValidate(); " language="javascript" id="_ctl0_PostForm_PreviewButton" Name="PreviewButton" ButtonType="PreviewMessage" /"GT"
      --"GT"

You can always write a GreaseMonkey script if you want the Preview button back.

(I replace "GT" and "LT" with their obvious meanings, I didn't want to upset Telligent's ungodly creation.)

Ulvhamne:

Uh. This guy must know something mere mortals dont about the space time continum. For sure.
Or he might have been drunk/stoned while coding.

don't knock it 'til you've tried it.  lest steve, king of miami be on the prowl:

http://www.moralminority.org/thread.phtml?tid=290

this is c#.  Nevermind the fact he could off by hours.  the constructor for a datetime takes the number of 100-nanosecond intervals since 12:00 AM Jan 1, 0001, which he is retriving from a 32-bit floating point.

Anonymous:

javacrypto:

The real question is: Why is a date being stored somewhere as a float?

Microsecond precision?  Like
PHP's microtime(), which returns a float UNIX timetamp with
microseconds in the decimal.  That's the only thing I can think
of.  Though this snippet doesn't exactly look like it came from a
precision environment.

Any sane modern language has an arbitrary length integer type, or at least a 64bits one. C#'s "long" is an alias for System.Int64, a 64bits integer.

Since C#'s DateTime does a "tick count" since January 1st, 0001 and a tick is 100 nanoseconds, it can run up to year 58454 (and 3 months). I guess it's pretty much enough. And no, it's not a UNIX timestamp.

According to MSDN c# maxdate value is

MaxValue: The value of this constant is equivalent to 23:59:59.9999999, December 31, 9999, exactly one 100-nanosecond tick before 00:00:00, January 1, 10000.

Anonymous:

According to MSDN c# maxdate value is

MaxValue: The value of this constant is equivalent to
23:59:59.9999999, December 31, 9999, exactly one 100-nanosecond tick
before 00:00:00, January 1, 10000.

Well, yeah, that's what's written in the documentation, but the datas you build your DateTime object from could allow them to run up to year 50000, that's all I meant.

javacrypto:

The real question is: Why is a date being stored somewhere as a float?
If the date was being stored properly, it would not have needed all
those conversions in the first place.

ItsAllGeekToMe:

holy efficient............so
like.....say 20 instances of the object call their GetDisplayValue
function...............now we have 100 variables, weeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!! 
That's what this thing must be......it's a variable-making machine!

masklinn:

Any sane modern language has an arbitrary length
integer type, or at least a 64bits one. C#'s "long" is an alias for
System.Int64, a 64bits integer.

Anonymous:

Name a single 'sane modern language' that has an arbitrary length integer type. Libraries for dealing with them don't count.

• Convert.ToDecimal(Single) is a widening conversion, so dVal2 has the same precision as fVal.


• Convert.ToDouble(Decimal) will throw an exception if it narrows, but Single < Double so we know this won't happen.


• The explicit type conversion Double -> Int64 is narrowing with exactly the same semantics as Single -> Int64.

public string GetDisplayValue(float fVal)
{
  long dVal = (long) fVal;
  DateTime DAT = new DateTime(dVal);
  return DAT.ToString(_dateFormat, _dfpi);
}

There is a miniscule possibility that the rounding done by
conversion from Single to Int64 is meaningful, but I have another
theory: this method was written by a programmer who had been given the
specification and was pissed off that date-times were being stored in
floats.

Anonymous:

Name a single 'sane modern language' that has an arbitrary length integer type. Libraries for dealing with them don't count.

wakeskate:

I don't recall giving you guys permission to print my copyright code for date converting... 

you're the owner of this wtf?

i think copyright law doesn't apply here, since copyrights are supposed to protect intellectual and creative assets.

now, if you had written it as a joke...

Name a single 'sane modern language' that has an arbitrary length integer type. Libraries for dealing with them don't count.

ammoQ:

Anonymous:

Name a single 'sane modern language' that has an arbitrary length integer type. Libraries for dealing with them don't count.

Python

whoisfred:

Anonymous:

Name a single 'sane modern language' that has an arbitrary length integer type. Libraries for dealing with them don't count.

java.lang.BigInteger



And don't tell me it is a library.  It is a class and in java classes define TYPES.

masklinn:

loneprogrammer:

Hey um... where did the Preview button go?

Send out the search parties, it's missing!

Since it was completely buggy and more than likely wouldn't've been fixed, it was merely removed.

If you want some kind of preview, write in HTML and switch to design view .

Anonymous:

ammoQ:

Anonymous:

Name a single 'sane modern language' that has an arbitrary length integer type. Libraries for dealing with them don't count.

Python

As far as I can establish, Python doesn't have built-in arbitrary
length integer math, it just has libraries like every other language.
Anyway, my point was that languages generally don't include an
arbitrary length type as a native type.



In any case, using one for a datetime would be foolish.

Anonymous:

Anyway, it's still not 'any sane modern language'.

Anonymous:

whoisfred:

Anonymous:

Name a single 'sane modern language' that has an arbitrary length integer type. Libraries for dealing with them don't count.

java.lang.BigInteger



And don't tell me it is a library.  It is a class and in java classes define TYPES.

No, classes are classes. The native types in Java are integer, boolean,
etc. Just because it's part of the standard library doesn't mean it's a
native type.

ammoQ:

Anonymous:

Name a single 'sane modern language' that has an arbitrary length integer type. Libraries for dealing with them don't count.

Python

Dammit, I wanted to say it

Well, I'll add ruby to the list then, which behaves the same as Python: stores regular integers in the integer built-in type, and automatically switches to the built-in arbitrary int (long for Python and Bignum for Ruby) when it spills out of the base int's range

Anonymous:

ammoQ:

Anonymous:

Name a single 'sane modern language' that has an arbitrary length integer type. Libraries for dealing with them don't count.

Python

As far as I can establish, Python doesn't have built-in arbitrary
length integer math, it just has libraries like every other language.
Anyway, my point was that languages generally don't include an
arbitrary length type as a native type.



In any case, using one for a datetime would be foolish.

You, sir, can't establish shit.

From Python's Numeric Types page:

There are four distinct numeric types: plain integers, long integers, floating point numbers, and complex numbers. In addition, Booleans are a subtype of plain integers. Plain integers (also just called integers) are implemented using long in C, which gives them at least 32 bits of precision. Long integers have unlimited precision.

Ruby's bignum is built in and behaves the same way, Lisp has had arbitrary length for years, and I specified "arbitrary or at least 64bits long"

Oh, and Java types are still types even though they're not primitive types. From the Java tutorial itself, Java has two categories of data types, primitives (which you define as "native") and references which are still types. Integer, String or Bignum may not be primitive types, but they're still types (or do you consider that Java doesn't have any String type?)

brazzy:

You originally asked for an arbitrary length integer TYPE (without
"native"), and a Java class most certainly is a type in Java
terminology. And why should libraries that are part of the runtime
distribution "not count"? This is a pointless debate based on uncertain
definition of terms and arbitrary distinctions.

...

  public bigint myBIGincrement(bigint x) {

    return x+1000000000000000L;

  }

...

...

  public BigInteger myBIGincrement(BigInteger x) {

    return x.add(new BigInteger("1000000000000000"));

  }

...

Anonymous:

Fine, I'll rephrase: Most languages don't have arbitrary length integer support built in. Most programs don't need it, and it's certainly not needed (or wise) for storage of a timestamp.

Java having a BigInt type is no different to any other language having a library for manipulating large integers. It happens to be in the standard library, but it's not part of the _language_. I asked for languages that had built in large integer types, not libraries.

woo hoo! Another language war thread! Only took about 20 odd posts this time and everybody has already forgotten about the WTF.

Anonymous:

Name a single 'sane modern language' that has
an arbitrary length integer type. Libraries for dealing with them don't
count.

masklinn:

ammoQ:

Python

Dammit, I wanted to say it

Oh, and Java types are still types even though they're not primitive types. From the Java tutorial itself, Java has two categories of data types, primitives (which you define as "native") and references
which are still types. Integer, String or Bignum may not be primitive
types, but they're still types (or do you consider that Java doesn't
have any String type?)

While strings are not primitve types in Java, I still
consider them native to the language; there are strings literals, string operators, the toString() method in the Object class; for that reasons, it's obvious that they are something special you could (unlike the BigInteger class) not build on your own within Java.

I find the effort and cleverness put into the blurb much more interesting than the code itself. The twisty maze of little casts, all alike isn't even bad in some inspired way that pushes the boundaries of badness.

redtetrahedron:

[:|]

OMG... Convert has a ToDateTime method that takes a float... good grief