[LEAPSECS] Lets get REAL about time.

[Paul J. Ste. Marie]

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