io: Redefine Clock.real to return timestamps relative to the POSIX/Unix epoch

`Clock.real` being defined to return timestamps relative to an
implementation-specific epoch means that there's currently no way for
the user to translate returned timestamps to actual calendar dates
without digging into implementation details of any particular `Io`
implementation. Redefining it to return timestamps relative to
1970-01-01T00:00:00Z fixes this problem.

There are other ways to solve this, such as adding a new vtable function
for returning the implementation-specific epoch, but in terms of
complexity this redefinition is by far the simplest solution and only
amounts to a simple 96-bit integer addition's worth of overhead on OSes
like Windows that use non-POSIX/Unix epochs.
This commit is contained in:
Carl Åstholm 2025-11-05 00:51:09 +01:00
parent ed7f2588e4
commit 5f1392247d

View file

@ -734,7 +734,7 @@ pub const Clock = enum {
/// A settable system-wide clock that measures real (i.e. wall-clock)
/// time. This clock is affected by discontinuous jumps in the system
/// time (e.g., if the system administrator manually changes the
/// clock), and by frequency adjust ments performed by NTP and similar
/// clock), and by frequency adjustments performed by NTP and similar
/// applications.
///
/// This clock normally counts the number of seconds since 1970-01-01
@ -742,8 +742,11 @@ pub const Clock = enum {
/// leap seconds; near a leap second it is typically adjusted by NTP to
/// stay roughly in sync with UTC.
///
/// The epoch is implementation-defined. For example NTFS/Windows uses
/// 1601-01-01.
/// Timestamps returned by implementations of this clock represent time
/// elapsed since 1970-01-01T00:00:00Z, the POSIX/Unix epoch, ignoring
/// leap seconds. This is colloquially known as "Unix time". If the
/// underlying OS uses a different epoch for native timestamps (e.g.,
/// Windows, which uses 1601-01-01) they are translated accordingly.
real,
/// A nonsettable system-wide clock that represents time since some
/// unspecified point in the past.