Suggestion for 1-Jan-1970 problem
Posted: Wed Dec 24, 2003 9:09 am
This is probably just a zero in the time field, so that the times shown are 0:00 hours UTC on 1 Jan. 1970, the "epoch" for the Unix time system (they show up as 31 Dec. 1969 for me at UTC+1).
Although I'm not directly affected by this problem myself, I do look through old threads occasionally, where the time got wiped. Sometimes the posts are shown in the correct order, sometimes they end up reversed- which is rather disconcerting. Furthermore, there's an ongoing discussion on the "first post" in the Beer Garden right now.
Here's a suggestion to at least show the correct order of these posts:
Most posts would still show as 1-Jan-1970 (post no. 36000 would be at 10 a.m. UTC), but the chronological order would be correct.
This should be possible with a simple SQL-command or a Perl 3-liner (depending on how the data is stored). The date joined could be processed similarly- assuming that the member nos. are assigned successively.
Of course it would be best to try this out on a copy of the data first!
G
Although I'm not directly affected by this problem myself, I do look through old threads occasionally, where the time got wiped. Sometimes the posts are shown in the correct order, sometimes they end up reversed- which is rather disconcerting. Furthermore, there's an ongoing discussion on the "first post" in the Beer Garden right now.
Here's a suggestion to at least show the correct order of these posts:
- Code: Select all
replace all 0-times with the post number
Most posts would still show as 1-Jan-1970 (post no. 36000 would be at 10 a.m. UTC), but the chronological order would be correct.
This should be possible with a simple SQL-command or a Perl 3-liner (depending on how the data is stored). The date joined could be processed similarly- assuming that the member nos. are assigned successively.
Of course it would be best to try this out on a copy of the data first!
G