days-after-J2000.0

[Jonathan A Rees <JAR@AI.AI.MIT.EDU>]

    Date: Wed, 15 Jun 88 13:33:24 EDT
    From: John D. Ramsdell <ramsdell%linus@mitre-bedford.ARPA>

    >How do the denotational semantics people handle calendar time, since
    >we all know that anything they do is obviously the right decision in
    >language design?

The same way you handle I/O (e.g. files and network connections), I
presume.  I have seen descriptions that pass around a file system as
well as a store, but since they never seem to part company, I don't
really see the point; and anyhow, that doesn't address the nondeterminism
of external agents.  Are we supposed to put quantum mechanics in our
model?

I don't think it's worth worrying about at the moment; how could any
real-life harm result from just imagining that the time and file system
are in the store, and making it an imaginary side effect to read the
time?  I can't conceive of how this could be consequential, and I'd love
to know if anyone does any reasoning using a formal specification that
could get screwed up by this.