localtime

• Many programs on my system write unix epoch times in their logs

• (That's the number of seconds since the start of 1970)

• For example, ezmlm log files:

        1089164175 + mjd@gmail.com Muir Manders <mjd@gmail.com>
        1089164403 + mjd@prather.org Chris Prather <mjd@prather.org>
        1089206791 - mjd@gcm.com
        1089220279 -probe mjd@emc.com
        1089231416 + mjd@yahoo.com Sulakshana P <mjd@yahoo.com>

• This is a very good date format

• Easily generated

• Easily parsed

• Clear and unambiguous

• Easy to compare and compute

• Universal

• Completely linear

• The one drawback:

• Hard for humans to read

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Copyright © 2005 M. J. Dominus