[LEAPSECS] [time-nuts] Leap Quirks

[M. Warner Losh]

In message: <5806D024-146D-43E4-AEA0-A7AA514E3EA4 at noao.edu>
            Rob Seaman <seaman at noao.edu> writes:

: M. Warner Losh wrote:

: 

: > POSIX doesn't support leap seconds.

: 

: I'm curious.  Is this the only widely recognized shortcoming of POSIX?


No.  There's others, but they are generally minor edge cases that
don't affect anything important.  Almost all the posix mistakes are
relegated to tty handling :).


: I mean - either POSIX is riddled with numerous other mistakes - or  

: this is the only issue remaining to address before POSIX is  

: perfected :-)

: 

: I suspect it is not the latter case, which suggests that there is a  

: list of other such instances where POSIX fails to implement long- 

: standing international standards.


This is the only international standard that I'm aware of that POSIX
implements wrong.  There are plenty of other international standards
that it doesn't implement, but those aren't really relevant (like,
say, ISO-9000).

The date handling can be used to implement non-conforming dates and
such, but as far as I know, the standard tools can be used to
implement conforming external representations.  This is unlike time_t
which is broken by design :(.

Warner