-------- Warner Losh writes: > The problem is time_t can't encode a leap second uniquely, but leap seconds > had been a thing for ~20 years when the first POSIX standards came out. It > was more of a willful choice to disregard them entirely as a simplification > than lack of clairvoyance.
I would say it is even worse: POSIX was simply an administrative exercise to rapidly rubber-stamp the AT&T manuals to define a common baseline "before UNIX fragmented". The "technical review" of POSIX amounted to "The seven dwarfs" comparing it to their own manuals, to ensure that their "me-too" UNIX could be made compliant with minimal effort. Even if it had been a very convincing proposal, any change as fundamental as time_t, be it leap-seconds or 64 bits, would have been instantly shot down, entirely on the grounds that "The seven dwarfs" didnt have the in-house UNIX-skill to implement the change. -- Poul-Henning Kamp | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20 p...@freebsd.org | TCP/IP since RFC 956 FreeBSD committer | BSD since 4.3-tahoe Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence. _______________________________________________ LEAPSECS mailing list LEAPSECS@leapsecond.com https://pairlist6.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/leapsecs
