Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!mit-eddie!ll-xn!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!decwrl!hplabs!hpl-opus!hpccc!hp-sde!hpfcdc!rml
From: rml@hpfcdc.HP.COM (Bob Lenk)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.hp
Subject: Re: time.h header files on HP9000/300.
Message-ID: <5570037@hpfcdc.HP.COM>
Date: 7 May 88 01:58:12 GMT
References: <12279@sri-spam.istc.sri.com>
Organization: HP Ft. Collins, Co.
Lines: 15

HP's primary commitment has always been to AT&T compatibility.  The
tv_sec field is unsigned because alarm(2) in SVID (and more recently
POSIX) is specified as dealing with unsigned ints, and alarm(2) and
[gs]etitimer(2) are closely tied in implementation.  (The difference
between unsigned ints and unsigned longs doesn't cause a problem since
the struct timeval's unsigned long can always represent alarm's unsigned
int).  There is generally no reason to have a struct timeval contain a
negative value.  I have heard of cases where arithmetic is done on
struct timevals and checks done for negatives.  This will not port
seemlessly to HP-UX, but will port easily (once discovered) with the
proper type casts.

		Bob Lenk
		{ihnp4, hplabs}!hpfcla!rml
		rml%hpfcla@hplabs.hp.com