On Wed, Oct 30, 2002 at 12:01:11AM +0000, David Laight wrote: > On Tue, Oct 29, 2002 at 05:50:10PM -0600, Steve Langasek wrote: > > On Tue, Oct 29, 2002 at 11:44:18PM +0000, David Laight wrote:
> > > What isn't clear (form the associated standards) is what you should do > > > to the system clock at the point the leap second is added/subtracted. > > > (Due to variations in the moment of intertia of the earth there > > > have been seconds added aas well as subtracted, even though the earth's > > > rotation is slowing down because the moon keeps stealing angular > > > momentum from it.) > > Well, if your system clock keeps proper time as measured in seconds since > > the epoch in UTC :), you don't need to do anything to the system clock; > > the leap seconds should then be applied when displaying time in the local > > time zone. > No - leap seconds have to be ignored when counting time the epoch. > Check the posix spec (www.opengroup.org for starters). POSIX doesn't control the definition of "UTC". If the system clock is stored in UTC, then handling of leap seconds is a requirement when converting from UTC to a local timezone. Steve Langasek postmodern programmer
