alt Hacker NewsA couple of the comments to the article suggest using 64-bit numbers, which is exactly the right solution. 2^64 nanoseconds=584.55 years - overflow is implausible for any realistic use case. Even pathological cases will struggle to induce wraparound at a human timescale.
(People will probably moan at the idea of restarting the process periodically rather than fixing the issue properly, but when the period would be something like 50 years I don't think it's actually a problem.)
Replies
> but when the period would be something like 50 years I don't think it's actually a problem
I think you have that backwards. If something needs to be done every week, it will get done every week. That's not a problem.
If something needs to be done every fifty years, you'll be lucky if it happens once.
> using 64-bit numbers, which is exactly the right solution
On a 64-bit platform, sure. When you're working on ring buffers with an 8-bit microcontroller, using 64-bit numbers would be such an overhead that nobody would even think of it.