"The unix time stamp is a way to track time as a running total of seconds. This count starts at the Unix Epoch on January 1st, 1970. Therefore, the unix time stamp is merely the number of seconds between a particular date and the Unix Epoch."

In order to count the number of seconds till a time, we have method Date.getTime() in Flash. This will effectively return the number of seconds from the Unix Epoch till the Date.

This is how i tried to find out the number of seconds till today's System Time:

var myDate = new Date();
trace(myDate);
var unixTime = Math.round(myDate.getTime()/1000);
trace("Unix Time: "+unixTime);

Output:

Fri Jan 22 13:01:55 GMT+0530 2010
Unix Time: 1264145516

To verify if we got the correct Unix TimeStamp of the normal time, check it on any online Unix Timestamp converters.

Problem arised when tried to convert the Unix Time we got into normal timestamp in Flash.

var myDate = new Date();
trace(myDate);
var unixTime = Math.round(myDate.getTime()/1000);
trace("Unix Time: "+unixTime);

var dateNew = new Date();
dateNew.setTime(unixTime);
trace(dateNew);

Output:

Fri Jan 22 16:22:42 GMT+0530 2010
Unix Time: 1264157563
Thu Jan 15 20:39:17 GMT+0530 1970

If you observe closely, while converting the Unix Timestamp to normal time, the year that's returned is 1970. If we use a online Unix Timestamp Converter to get back the normal time, it returns approximately correct time by inputting the above Unix Timestamp.

That was strange to get the difference while converting Unix Timestamp to Normal TimeStamp. Just observed this behavior, so thought of sharing it to find a solution or answer how to overcome it.