Leap Seconds

Peter Simons simons at cryp.to
Sun Nov 16 00:36:05 EST 2003


Ashley Yakeley writes:

 > How do you intend to keep the leap second table up to
 > date?

You could run an automated cron job (or whatever your OS
uses for these purposes) and update it automatically from
<http://cr.yp.to/libtai/leapsecs.txt>.

Or, if your OS supports the mechanisms described in
<http://www.ntp.org/ntpfaq/NTP-s-algo.htm#S-ALGO-KERNEL>,
leap seconds will be announced to the OS by the Network Time
Protocol daemon.

Or one could argue that this problem is beyond the scope of
a "programming language" and that the users are on their
own. I'm sure the vast majority of the population _will_
survive, even if their computer system misses a leap second.
OK, maybe not the vast majority ...

But what the heck, this planet is too crowded anyway. :-)

Peter



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