[LEAPSECS] Common Calendar Time (CCT) -Brooks Harris

[Joseph Gwinn]

On Sat, 18 Jan 2014 17:39:00 +0000, Zefram wrote:

> Joseph Gwinn wrote:

>> No.  If your poke around into how time is used, you will discover that 

>> what is stored is the count of seconds since the Epoch.  Broken-down 

>> time is used only when there is a human to be humored.

> 

> Sure, scalar time_t values are used underneath, and I didn't say

> otherwise.  That's what time_t is for.  The kernel even increments the

> time_t clock, most of the time, as if it's a linear count of seconds,

> which is how it behaves on the small scale outside the immediate

> vicinity of leap seconds.  But a kernel that knows about leap seconds

> then introduces a discontinuity in the scalar value, somewhere near each

> leap, to maintain the scalar<->UTC relationship.

> 

>> POSIX time is defined without reference to NTP,

> 

> Indeed.  The two definitions are separate, but match in most of their

> design features.


The word I would have used is "parallel".  NTP and UNIX/POSIX solve 
different problems, but still the similarity wasn't quite a happy 
accident.

Joe Gwinn