[LEAPSECS] The relation between calendars and leap seconds.

Tony Finch dot at dotat.at
Wed Nov 12 10:02:26 EST 2008


On Wed, 12 Nov 2008, Rob Seaman wrote:

> Clive D.W. Feather wrote:

>

> > No, it's because there are no applications where people need to say "what

> > would my GPS receiver had said in 1751?". Whereas people do need to

> > represent older times in (say) POSIX time.

>

> Do they? Example use case from 1751?


Well, not 1751, but 32 bit POSIX time is signed so extends back before its
(proleptic) epoch of 1970-01-01, and it's not unreasonable to use negative
times to represent (say) timestamps on files archived from the 1960s.

Tony.
--
f.anthony.n.finch <dot at dotat.at> http://dotat.at/
HUMBER THAMES: NORTHWEST 4 OR 5, OCCASIONALLY 6 AT FIRST AND LATER. MODERATE,
BECOMING OCCASIONALLY SLIGHT. SQUALLY SHOWERS AT FIRST. MAINLY GOOD.


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