Timer server

[Kenneth Lundin]

> 
> Thanks a lot! 
> 
> The timer BIFs accept only 32 bit arguments... In milliseconds, that's not a high upper limit. Will that change?
> 
> regards,
> Vlad
> 

We have no plans to accept bigger input than 32 bit to the timer BIFs.
At least not in the 32 bit verion of the Erlang VM.
The new timer module will continue to support bigger values just like 
the old one. It will do this by dividing a long timeout into several 
shorter timeouts that the timer BIFs can handle.

With 32 bit you can represent 1193 hours and I think that is quite a 
long time for a timeout. To set a timer for something to happen a 
specific time on a specific date I think should be handled in a 
different way than by just calculating the difference from now and then
set a timer on that. This could then go wrong if the time is adjusted 
for some reason (e.g daylight savings ). In those cases I think it is 
necessary to check against local time with a suitable periodicity.

The accuracy of a timer on a specific time and date need probably not be 
on the millisecond level either.

Regards Kenneth Lundin (Product Manager Erlang/OTP)

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