Hi,

Can anyone explain why this,
Date.parse("Jan 1, 1970")
equals this,
18000000
?

Microsoft's documentation reports this, "
The parse method returns an integer value representing the number of
milliseconds between midnight, January 1, 1970 and the date supplied
in dateVal.
"

Would that not imply that the above value should be ZERO?

Thanks!

"Ben" wrote:
> Can anyone explain why this,
> Date.parse("Jan 1, 1970")
> equals this,
> 18000000
> ?

Your time zone accounts for the difference. Compare:

Date.parse("Jan 1, 1970 EST") // 18000000
Date.parse("Jan 1, 1970 GMT") // 0



--
Dave Anderson

Unsolicited commercial email will be read at a cost of $500 per message. Use
of this email address implies consent to these terms.

In microsoft.public.scripting.jscript message <1182292689.337148.23170 [at] o
61g2000hsh.googlegroups.com>, Tue, 19 Jun 2007 15:38:09, Ben
<vanevery [at] gmail.com> posted:

>Can anyone explain why this,
> Date.parse("Jan 1, 1970")
>equals this,
> 18000000
>?
>
>Microsoft's documentation reports this, "
>The parse method returns an integer value representing the number of
>milliseconds between midnight, January 1, 1970 and the date supplied
>in dateVal.
>"
>
>Would that not imply that the above value should be ZERO?

It would, but MS documentation should not be believed infallible.

You have 18000000 ms or 18000 sec or 300 min or 5 hours.

You, apparently being in New York or thereabouts, are five hours slow on
the real time, which is of course GMT.

Their "midnight, January 1, 1970" is ambiguous, because a day has two
midnights, and also wrong, because it implies local time.

The true zero is 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UT, to which UTC & GMT are good
approximations for the purpose.

Note - Microsoft probably copied the error, rather than originating it.

It's a good idea to read the newsgroup c.l.j and its FAQ. See below.

--
(c) John Stockton, Surrey, UK. ? [at] merlyn.demon.co.uk Turnpike v6.05 IE 6
news:comp.lang.javascript FAQ <URL:http://www.jibbering.com/faq/index.html>.
<URL:http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/js-index.htm> jscr maths, dates, sources.
<URL:http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/> TP/BP/Delphi/jscr/&c, FAQ items, links.

There he excels.

Like anybody who thinks Cristmas is the day
the sun shines 24 hours over the his square mile.

And the rest of the word of 6 Billion will suck up
to a militant and lying minority of ess than 100 million.


Year, right.





"Dave Anderson" <NPQRWPDWZGSP [at] spammotel.com> wrote in message
news:137h00iejea1c1d [at] corp.supernews.com...
> "Ben" wrote:
>> Can anyone explain why this,
>> Date.parse("Jan 1, 1970")
>> equals this,
>> 18000000
>> ?
>
> Your time zone accounts for the difference. Compare:
>
> Date.parse("Jan 1, 1970 EST") // 18000000
> Date.parse("Jan 1, 1970 GMT") // 0
>
>
>
> --
> Dave Anderson
>
> Unsolicited commercial email will be read at a cost of $500 per message.
> Use of this email address implies consent to these terms.