[time-nuts] Leap Quirks
M. Warner Losh
imp at bsdimp.com
Sun Jan 4 05:54:35 UTC 2009
In message: <495FF91C.60401 at rubidium.dyndns.org>
Magnus Danielson <magnus at rubidium.dyndns.org> writes:
: M. Warner Losh skrev:
: > In message: <m3mye8qen3.fsf at lugabout.jhcloos.org>
: > James Cloos <cloos at jhcloos.com> writes:
: > : >>>>> "Warner" == M Warner Losh <imp at bsdimp.com> writes:
: > :
: > : Jim> By which sequence?
: > :
: > : Warner> The sequence where midnight % 86400 isn't 0.
: > :
: > : MY appologies, but that isn't narrowing it for me. POSIX only cares
: > : about POSIX midnight, not UTC midnight, so the fact that it was already
: > : past PODIX midnight when the leap second and UTC midnight happened is
: > : irrelevant to POSIX.
: >
: > posix midnight and utc midnight are the same things. You had said
: > that the system time was returned as ....24 at UTC 2009-01-01
: > 00:00:00, which isn't posixly correct.
:
: Um... no. That's the hacked POSIX interpretation, not the POSIX standard.
:
: We have at least three POSIX interpretations here.
:
: One which has UTC rubber seconds from 1970 to 1972 and from then true SI
: seconds from 1972.
: One which has true SI seconds from 1970.
: One which has UTC tracking in pieces and is slid "sideways" to make
: midnight match UTC midnight.
:
: The two first ones is interpretations of POSIX over UTC variations. The
: third one is a hack of POSIX to make it kind of work anyway with NTP.
: Only with the third interpretation POSIX midnight and UTC midnight is
: the same.
:
: Now, which of them is "right"?
Midnight must be xxxx00. POSIX says so explicitly because leap
seconds do not exist in POSIX. The committee has issued a very
explicit addendum to this effect.
Which one is more desirable? Well, that's a matter of debate, but
which one is POSIXly correct isn't.
Warner
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