DevelopmentAlso called: "epoch time", "posix time"
Unix timestamps provide a universal, timezone-independent way to represent time.
Key characteristics
- Integer count of seconds (or milliseconds in some systems).
- Always in UTC (no timezone offset).
- Same value globally at any given moment.
- Easy arithmetic for time calculations.
Common formats
- Seconds: 1609459200 (10 digits).
- Milliseconds: 1609459200000 (13 digits, JavaScript).
- Microseconds: Used in high-precision systems.
Use cases
- Database timestamp storage.
- API response timestamps.
- Log file entries.
- Cache expiration times.
Gotchas
- Year 2038 problem (32-bit signed integer overflow).
- Leap seconds not accounted for.
- Conversion errors between seconds/milliseconds.
Explore More Development
View all termsCron Expression
A time-based job scheduling syntax using five or six fields to specify when tasks should run.
Read more →Diff Algorithm
A computational method for comparing two sets of data and identifying differences between them.
Read more →JSON (JavaScript Object Notation)
A lightweight data interchange format using human-readable text to represent structured data.
Read more →Markdown
A lightweight markup language that uses plain text formatting to create structured documents.
Read more →Regular Expressions (Regex)
Pattern-matching syntax used to search, validate, and manipulate text based on rules.
Read more →Text Diff (Difference)
A comparison showing line-by-line or character-by-character changes between two versions of text.
Read more →