getdate() function limitation?

[Anon]

.
.
$theTimestamp = mktime(0,0,0,1,1,$year);
$theDate = getdate($theTimestamp);

.
.

when $year has a value that exceeds 2038 it breaks .... I noticed as well
it breaks with a very low year

Is there a limitation with this function or am I doing something wrong here?

[Anon]

mktime() (and other PHP date/time functions) are based on the UNIX timestamp which is expressed as seconds since the UNIX epoch (1 Jan 1970 00:00:00). Due to the limitation of the size of integer used to store this value it is not useful after some point in Feb 2039 (IIRC).