Re: [openpgp] New fingerprint: to v5 or not to v5

[Werner Koch <[e-mail]>]

On Mon,  5 Oct 2015 05:43, [e-mail] said:

> This reminds me. I suspect we want to move to be explicit that the
> timestamp is unsigned during RFC 4880bis, or we want to allocate
> more bits and make it a 64-bit integer (8 octets).

I was thinking about this but:

 3.1.  Scalar Numbers

   Scalar numbers are unsigned and are always stored in big-endian
   format.  Using n[k] to refer to the kth octet being interpreted, the
   value of a two-octet scalar is ((n[0] << 8) + n[1]).  The value of a
   four-octet scalar is ((n[0] << 24) + (n[1] << 16) + (n[2] << 8) +
   n[3]).

Thus it is an implementation problem for 32 bit systems which still have
not switched from to a 64 bit time_t or fixed their implementation to
work with dates after 2038 (which is not a problem because only
(time_t)(-1) has a special meaning).

I doubt that we need to care about the year 2106 already in a v5 format.

> The currnet POSIX-compliant epoch time_t starting at midnight January 1,
> 1970 using a signed 32-bit integer (4 octets) runs into trouble at 0x80000000 

POSIX 2001 says in Base Definitions, line 13001:

  - time_t and clock_t shall be integer or real-floating types.

it is not specified whether signed or unsigned and thus both are
allowed.


Shalom-Salam,

   Werner

-- 
Die Gedanken sind frei.  Ausnahmen regelt ein Bundesgesetz.