Recently I was debugging code which relied on TimeDifference when computing difference in days between two Dates. It turned out that code like
TimeDifference.between(
Date.new(2015, 3, 15),
Date.new(2015, 4, 14)
).in_days.to_i
returns on different platforms different results. Having read how TimeDifference makes the calculations (dividing difference in seconds by an approximate length of a year / month / day / ... in seconds) I'm not surprised any more by the results, but for the sake of others tempted to make the same mistake I suggest being more explicit in the README concerning accuracy: TimeDifference is great for quick calculations where no accuracy is required (how long is it since I wrote my blog post?), but unsuitable for accurate computations (for how many days of using the service will I be billed?).
Recently I was debugging code which relied on TimeDifference when computing difference in days between two
Dates. It turned out that code likereturns on different platforms different results. Having read how TimeDifference makes the calculations (dividing difference in seconds by an approximate length of a year / month / day / ... in seconds) I'm not surprised any more by the results, but for the sake of others tempted to make the same mistake I suggest being more explicit in the README concerning accuracy: TimeDifference is great for quick calculations where no accuracy is required (how long is it since I wrote my blog post?), but unsuitable for accurate computations (for how many days of using the service will I be billed?).