Re: Duration Calculation

Jon Paris skrev den 27-01-2008 19:44:

On 27-Jan-08, at 1:00 PM, java400-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

You can load it into a java.util.Date, extract the corresponding number
of milliseconds since 1970.01.01, and you can then take the difference
and round down to number of days.

This is part of the current problem - the date related classes seem to be trying to deal with Daylight Savings Time or something and when your dates cross the changeover point the results are inaccurate.

Besides - doesn't it strike you as thoroughly silly that one should even have to contemplate "playing" with milliseconds to get a count of a number of days! It is insane that such steps should be required in a so-called "modern" language.

Every language has its warts. Hence the recommendation of a third party package.

The nastiness of the Date + Calendar routines - been there, ground my teeth - is well summarized in http://www.jroller.com/cpurdy/entry/the_seven_habits_of_highly. If it helps, Calendar was written by IBM folks :)

Buying a package to solve a basic language deficiency just sticks in my craw I'm afraid.

If I had suggested you should _buy_ anything, I'd mentioned the price. This particular package is open source and free: "Joda is licenced under an Apache style licence", which should be ok regardless where you want to use it.