Re: Why is abstime type deprecated?

Kilian Hagemann <hagemann1@egs.uct.ac.za> writes:
> After long googling I found that abstime, as was still current in 6.x, would
> do the trick for me. But the 7.x documentation says "You are discouraged from
> using these types in new applications" and that "Any or all of these internal
> types might disappear in a future release". The Version 8.0 History file
> makes no indication of abstime disappearing, but I'm still worried about
> implementing my database with abstime. Why is it deprecated?

Because it will certainly break by 2038, when 32-bit time_t overflows.

In practice, Unix systems will have to move to 64-bit time_t before
that, and we'll probably either remove abstime or make it an 8-byte type
as soon as that practice is common.

            regards, tom lane