[bug #44520] time.h mentions a "best effort representation" but does not explain it

[avrs-admin]

Thu 12 Mar 2015 04:20:48 PM CET

This bug report applies to avr-libc 1.8.1.

The documentation for time.h mentions the following:

Section 7.23.2.3 mktime() The standard specifies that mktime() should return (time_t) -1, if the time cannot be represented. This implementation always returns a 'best effort' representation.

Please explain what "best effort" means in this context, and also add relevant information to the documentation of mktime and gm_mktime.

I assume these two functions clamp the value of the returned time_t to [0,UINT32_MAX], but is that the only limitation?

This issue was migrated from https://savannah.nongnu.org/bugs/?44520