section_path: Limitations/Range of representable times
section_name: Range of representable times
paragraph_text: Range of representable times
  
  Unix time by design does not require a specific size for the storage, but most common implementations of Unix time use a signed integer with the same size as the word size of the underlying hardware. As the majority of modern computers are 32-bit or 64-bit, and a large number of programs are still written in 32-bit compatibility mode, this means that many programs using Unix time are using signed 32-bit integer fields. The maximum value of a signed 32-bit integer is 2 31 − 1, and the minimum value is − 2 31, making it impossible to represent dates before 13 December 1901 (at 20:45:52 UTC) or after 19 January 2038 (at 03:14:07 UTC). The early cutoff can have an impact on databases that are storing historical information; in some databases where 32-bit Unix time is used for timestamps, it may be necessary to store time in a different form of field, such as a string, to represent dates before 1901. The late cutoff is known as the Year 2038 problem and has the potential to cause issues as the date approaches, as dates beyond the 2038 cutoff would wrap back around to the start of the representable range in 1901.: 60
  
  Date range cutoffs are not an issue with 64-bit representations of Unix time, as the effective range of dates representable with Unix time stored in a signed 64-bit integer is over 584 billion years, or 292 billion years in either direction of the 1970 epoch.: 60-61