Re: Date/Time Types : internals

Florence Cousin <cousinflo@free.fr> wrote:

> At the bottom of the page about Date/Time types (
>
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.1/interactive/datatype-datetime.html
> )
> there is this sentence :
>
> Date conventions before the 19th century make for interesting
> reading, but are not consistent enough to warrant coding into a
> date/time handler.
>
>
> This sentence seemed very strange to me, and I am not sure to
> really understand what it implies (or not) for the user. Could
> someone explain that this really means and implies?

You can get some idea by reading this page, especially the
"Adoption" section:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregorian_calendar

I guess the point is that for hundreds of years, the same day could
have a different date depending which country's calendar you were
looking at.  I'm not entirely clear why there's a problem if you
pick the Gregorian calendar and apply it retroactively.  If George
Washington was able to adapt to his birthday changing, I think I
could deal with it, too:

http://www.archives.gov/legislative/features/washington/

II mean, there are still a lot of other calendars in use today, and
we don't let that stop us from using the Gregorian calendar.

-Kevin