[R] julian.default on Windows (was years from as.POSIXlt)

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Wed, 10 Mar 2004, Christophe Declercq wrote:

> As I understand it, there is perhaps something bad with "1970-01-01 00:00",
> not in R, but in (at least some versions of) MS-Windows (e.g.
> http://finzi.psych.upenn.edu/R/Rhelp02a/archive/26357.html).

Ok, I set my machine to CET and I get the problem.  It is indeed a
Microsoft bug: it seems its mktime can only regards as valid times after
1970-01-01 00:00:00 GMT (and not after that time in the current timezone).  
Hence R's strptime has trouble in the period of 1970 when CMT was in 1969.  
That's pretty esoteric!

Fixed now in R-devel.

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595