Re: Predictable Internet Time

[Joe Touch <[e-mail]>]

On 1/3/2017 3:14 PM, Tony Finch wrote:
>
> Joe Touch <[e-mail]> wrote:
> >
> > Leap seconds are still seconds, which are counted in "seconds since
> > epoch".
>
> Can you you show me where in the POSIX spec linked below leap seconds
> are counted? I thought they were not.

 A leap second is just a way to stall the UTC representation so it takes
61 seconds for a particular minute to pass, but the seconds still pass
and the seconds since epoch ought to increment accordingly.

The Posic spec describes how to convert seconds since epoch to UTC; it
is that conversion where leap seconds come into play.


>
> > >
> http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/basedefs/V1_chap04.html#tag_04_16
>
> > > $ perl -MPOSIX -e 'print strftime "%F %T\n", gmtime 1483228799'
> > > 2016-12-31 23:59:59
> > > $ perl -MPOSIX -e 'print strftime "%F %T\n", gmtime 1483228800'
> > > 2017-01-01 00:00:00
> >
> > In would presume that the same code would generate a time that is one
> > second behind UTC right now.
>
> I'm not sure what you mean. If you add (24+24+23)*3600 seconds
> to 1483228800 you get 23:00:00 today,

If 1483228799 is the correct number of TAI seconds since the Unix epoch
and if that accurately represents 2016-12-31 23:59:59, then 2017-01-01
00:00:00 should not have been output until 1483228801.

Since that wasn't accounted for, we are displaying a "Posix UTC" time
that is one second ahead of where UTC actually is.


>
> > I.e., the Posix code is incorrect in claiming it reports UTC.
>
> Yes, I agree.
>
> > NTP reports seconds since epoch; it is in the conversion of that value
> > to display time that the issue of leap seconds comes into play. In that
> > case, some systems report 59-59-00 and others 59-00-00, i.e, repeating a
> > UTC value to account for the leap second in the human-readble output.
> > Internally, the number of seconds which have passed is correct and
> > include the leap second.
>
> But if the count of seconds includes the leap second, surely the
> number representing the leap second could be printed properly as :60 ?

UTC defines it that way, so if you want to output the correct UTC value,
that is the only solution.

Any other solution - smear, repeating times (59-59-00 or 59-00-00) can
be generated, but would be incorrect relative to UTC.

Joe