[LEAPSECS] Lets get REAL about time.

Paul J. Ste. Marie paul_j at ste-marie.org
Thu Jan 26 01:59:30 EST 2012


On 1/21/2012 4:44 AM, Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:

> I think it is important that the unit of the representation is a

> second rather than a day, simply because most of the stuff computers

> do are in the second domain, not in the day domain. (See code example

> above)


There's a lot of business programming for which days are far more
important than seconds, but in those cases (interest, book releases,
etc), it's very much local legal time that matters, not a continuous
timescale. Correct and current daylight saving time transitions are
more important than leap seconds and milliseconds in those cases.

The basic problem is that no one knows exactly how long from now it will
be until 2026-July-28 09:00:00 US/Eastern. You could have a daylight
saving time definition change, the US might shift to a single time zone,
Congress might rearrange the months, etc. Nevertheless, if that date's
in a contract somewhere, it's the definition when it arrives that will
matter, not when we think it will arrive today.


--
--Paul



More information about the LEAPSECS mailing list