[LEAPSECS] [time-nuts] Leap Quirks

[Poul-Henning Kamp]

In message <5806D024-146D-43E4-AEA0-A7AA514E3EA4 at noao.edu>, Rob Seaman writes:

>M. Warner Losh wrote:

>

>> POSIX doesn't support leap seconds.

>

>I'm curious.  Is this the only widely recognized shortcoming of POSIX?


No, POSIX has numerous defects and bad choices, but barring a major
effort by major governments, POSIX is what we have.

One particular horrible example of POSIX stupidity is the lack of
a pthread_mutex_assert() or the fact that pthread_cond_timedwait()
takes an absolute time as timeout, not time interval.

ISO-C has stupidities as well, I spent far more time on one of them
because because people didn't think clearly:

The strftime() function returns zero on error, or the length
of the string produced.

Now, imagine calling strftime("%p") in a locale which does not
use AM/PM indication because they are 24h based.

Poul-Henning

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