Year 2000 Statement

The year 2000 problem is related to the fact that many programs store dates as two digits, thereby creating false or undetermined results when comparing years above 2000.    

Since version 1.0, Smalltalk uses exclusively operating system services and structures to deal with time and dates. To be more specific, the Time class in Smalltalk MT maps to the SYSTEMTIME structure. Another time entity used implicitly is the FILETIME structure, which is a 64-bit LargeInteger. The latter is used by file system services. Smalltalk MT uses only operating system services to convert between these two structures. 

As a consequence, programs written in Smalltalk MT that use the built-in formats are Year 2000 ready if the operating system they run on is also Year 2000 ready (which may require applying upgrades and patches).

Customers using Smalltalk MT should perform the following checks on the software:

• If the application uses third-party libraries, ensure that those libraries are Y2K compliant
• Screen  application-specific data formats for potential Y2K problems. In particular, change database columns and data file record that use 2 digits.
• Check UI code that accept two-digit date fields; how is the date being interpreted?

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