Dates and Times

Introduction

Dates and times are surprisingly vast and complex topics. As a reflection of this fact, the C++ standard library does not provide a proper date type. C++ inherits the structs and functions for date and time manipulation from C, along with a couple of date/time input and output functions that take into account localization. You can find relief, however, in the Boost date_time Library by Jeff Garland, which is possibly the most comprehensive and extensible date and time library for C++ available. I will be using it in several of the recipes. There is an expectation among the C++ community that future date/time extensions to the standard library will be based on the Boost date_time library.

The Boost date_time library includes two separate systems for manipulating dates and times: one for manipulating times and one for manipulating dates using a Gregorian calendar. The recipes will cover both systems.

For more information on dates and times, specifically reading and writing them, please see Chapter 13.

Gregorian Calendar and Leap Years

The Gregorian calendar is the most widely used calendar in the Western world today. The Gregorian calendar was intended to fix a flaw in the Julian calendar. The slow process of adoption of the Gregorian calendar started in 1582.

The Julian calendar dictates that every fourth year is a leap year, but every hundredth year is a non-leap year. The Gregorian calendar introduced a new exception that every 400 years should be a leap year.

Leap years are designed to compensate for the Earth's rotation around the sun being out of synchronization with the length of the day. In other words, dividing the length of a solar year, by the length of a day is an irrational number. The result is that if the calendar is not adjusted we would have seasonal drift, where the equinoxes and solstices (which determine the seasons) would become further out of synchronization with each new year.

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