Type for uptime in seconds

[Eric S. Raymond]

Hal Murray via devel <devel at ntpsec.org>:
> Context is Issue #424
> 
> It's simple to change the counters to 64 bits.  But a few of the relevant 
> variables are uptime in seconds.  Is there a good type to use for them?  
> time_t is misleading.  current_time is seconds since ntpd was started not 
> seconds since 1970.
> 
> unsigned long current_time;            /* seconds since startup */
> 
> It gets initialized to 0 and bumped every second by a timer signal handler.
> 
> 32 bits is enough.  (I'm not going to worry about systems being up more than 
> 138 years.)  I'd be happy to use a 64 bit type if that makes things cleaner.  
> I don't think we have to worry about conversion from 64 bit time_t.

I'd just do "typedef uint32_t uptime_t;" somewhere, myself.  There isn't
a system type devoted to this sort of thing; closest would be clock_t.  The
units for that are not specified, but are often microseconds.
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		<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>

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