Duration.MAX_VALUE

[Stephen Colebourne]

Just noting that the conceptual definition of Duration.MAX and MIN
have been in use since Java 8, and I disagree with any change to the
current definition.

You cannot successfully negate Long.MIN_VALUE, so there is no
requirement that edge cases like this support negation.

Stephen


On Wed, 8 Oct 2025 at 21:29, Pavel Rappo <pavel.rappo at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> In another thread, there's a question on whether we can define
> Duration.MIN such that it's not the exact minimum, but rather the
> minimum "negatable minimum"? Put differently, can we define
> Duration.MIN as Duration.MAX.negated(), where Duration.MAX is
> Duration.ofSeconds(Long.MAX_VALUE, 999_999_999)? What are the concerns
> with this, if any?
>
> -Pavel
>
> On Wed, Sep 3, 2025 at 1:49 PM Pavel Rappo <pavel.rappo at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Couldn't recall or quickly find if this was asked before.
> >
> > I come across this quite often: there doesn’t seem to be a readily
> > available maximum value for java.time.Duration -- a value that
> > represents the longest possible duration.
> >
> > I assume there are plenty of homegrown constants out in the wild
> > addressing this. Don’t get me wrong: it’s not hard to create one. The
> > issue, in my experience, is that it takes time and sometimes
> > experimentation.
> >
> > Unless one reads the Javadoc carefully, it’s not obvious that the
> > maximum duration can be constructed as follows:
> >
> >     Duration.of(Long.MAX_VALUE, 999_999_999);
> >
> > Naturally, one might first try using IDE autocomplete. For example,
> > creating a Duration from Long.MAX_VALUE of a large unit -- millennia,
> > centuries, decades, etc. -- only to run into ArithmeticException. Only
> > when reaching seconds does it finally work:
> >
> >     Duration.ofSeconds(Long.MAX_VALUE);
> >
> > or
> >
> >     Duration.of(Long.MAX_VALUE, ChronoUnit.SECONDS);
> >
> > Of course, there’s no practical difference between
> > Duration.of(Long.MAX_VALUE, 999_999_999) and
> > Duration.ofSeconds(Long.MAX_VALUE). We’re talking about durations on
> > the order of 292 billion years, after all. The exact value isn’t the
> > problem. The problem is that the values are inconsistent, and arriving
> > to them is error-prone. Adding a constant to java.time.Duration would
> > simplify things.
> >
> > -Pavel