Standard C Date/Time Library: Programming the World's Calendars and Clocks - Softcover

Latham, Lance

9780879304966: Standard C Date/Time Library: Programming the World's Calendars and Clocks

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0879304960 ISBN 13: 9780879304966

Publisher: CRC Press, 1998

Does the year 2000 have you sweating late-night code? Use our complete library of C programming functions to master Y2K, time on the Net, ISO 8601, time stamp compression, or any other time/date application you encounter. Using the astronomers Julian Day'

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From the Author:

Overview of SCDTL
SCDTL is a complete, integrated tool kit of C functions and data structures for dealing with date/time applications.

We deal with many issues, such as Y2K, compression and ISO 8601 document concerns, as well as about 30 different calendars.

The treated calendars include Gregorian (historical and proleptic), Julian (historical and proleptic), Roman republican, Egyptian Solar, Coptic, Islamic (astronomical and civil), Jewish (Hebrew), Maya, Indian civil, Nabonassar Era, Armenian, Khwarizmian (Chorasmian), Alexandrian, Ethiopic, Macedonian, Syrian, Persian Solar, Persian Mobile, Zoroastrian, Baha'i (and Badi), Chinese, French Revolutionary (Republican), International Fixed Calendar, The World Calendar, Positivist, Peter Meyer's "Goddess Lunar Calendar" and Jalali.

Also included is a calendar (and clock) for the planet Mars.

The discussions of historical background are fairly extensive.

Where days of observance are of importance, discussion and code is provided. The Jewish calendar covers many days of observance, as well as functions for Yahrzeit, bar mitzvah, etc.

SCDTL uses the Julian Day number (JD#) system as a linear scale for performing date/time math. As a consequence, most of the difficult date/time problems, such as calendar conversions, are reduced to a few lines of code.

To convert a date in calendar A to an equivalent date in calendar B means writing C code in an application of the following form:
jd = date_A_to_JD0 (&date_A);
date_B = JD0_to_Date_B (jd);

Since the JD# system ties date and time together, the tedious conversions are eliminated.

SCDTL likewise eliminates the necessity of 'rolling your own' code when considering common problems such as day of the week. Surprisingly, a good many of the accepted solutions for this and related problems contain bugs, or are severely limited in range.

The 'Millennium' problem has made one issue very clear - date/time code appears in virtually every program. And, it is easy to make simple and costly mistakes in this area. SCDTL solves this problem.

The style of SCDTL is very simple to use. It was deliberately written to be read, and the code can be used in a 'canned' way, even by novices.

I am interested in feedback. I continue to collect calendar algorithms for more esoteric and historical calendars. Right now, I am looking for more information on the Vietnamese, Japanese, various Thai and Burmese and traditional Indian 'astrological' calendars. I also want some more information on the vagaries of the regional medieval European calendars. It is my intention that SCDTL be 'one stop shopping' for all date/time applications.

I will be setting up a Web page in the near future. The page will be a forum for date/time issues, and serve as a staging area for supplementary date/time code as it becomes available. SCDTL is HUGE (about 4200 pages), with much of the material on CD-ROM. There are 191 test programs, e.g., that exercise every function and demonstrate its use.

Talk to me, at . It's about time.

About the Author:

Lance Latham is the principal of Resource Management Systems, Inc., a software development firm in McAllen, Texas, and has been programming on a wide range of platforms for three decades. Although he has programmed in more languages than he wants to count, Lance now primarily codes in C for developing systems that manage critical resources in enterprises ranging from health care to jewelry marketing.

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