[LEAPSECS] Crunching Bulletin B numbers (POSIX time)

Clive D.W. Feather clive at davros.org
Mon Feb 21 05:02:16 EST 2011


Paul Sheer said:

> A miss is as good as a mile when a timestamp is an index into a hash

> table.

>

> There are many complex systems in this world that do a lot of wierd

> things with timestamps.

>

> These systems don't care whether the event really did happen at

> 12:34:56pm nor whether the clock was a few minutes slow that day.

>

> But they DO care that they are talking about the SAME event!!!


In which case they will have some arrangement to synchronize their clocks.
Or they will be aware that the clocks are not synchronized and will have
some way to address this in their "weird things with timestamps".

Or, as Ian points out, they're fundamentally and irretrievably broken even
before we add leap seconds into the mix.


> It must still stay the same no matter what conversion functions

> are applied to it.

>

> This is the very useful properly that Posix time currently has.


No, it doesn't.

--
Clive D.W. Feather | If you lie to the compiler,
Email: clive at davros.org | it will get its revenge.
Web: http://www.davros.org | - Henry Spencer
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