Re: Date/Time Types : internals

"Kevin Grittner" <Kevin(dot)Grittner(at)wicourts(dot)gov> writes:
> I guess the point is that for hundreds of years, the same day could
> have a different date depending which country's calendar you were
> looking at. I'm not entirely clear why there's a problem if you
> pick the Gregorian calendar and apply it retroactively.

Which is, in fact, exactly what our code does. I think that bit in the
docs is trying to explain why we do that rather than try to get the
code to reflect what people really used back then.

A possibly comparable point is that for timezone info we use the Olsen
database (tzdata), which *does* make an effort to reflect historical
realities. In consequence, at least once every several months we
get somebody complaining about what a strange GMT offset he's seeing
for timestamps before 1900 or so. If there's anyone out there who
actually likes that behavior, we've not heard about it. (Not that
I am going to try to get Olsen et al to change their policy.)

regards, tom lane