On 1/9/2024 4:45 PM, Doug Ewell wrote:
Brooks Harris wrote:
The leap-second is evil. Presumably in the same way that leap year is “evil,” and for the same reason.
-- Doug Ewell, CC, ALB | Lakewood, CO, US | ewellic.org Ah, no.
Ok, my comment was a bit smart aleck. The leap-second is "evil" for several reasons. Leap-seconds are introduced at irregular times to maintain approximation of observed solar time. They are not algorithmically predicable, requiring lookup of the metadata provided by IERS. Posix-time and many systems that have fixed 86400-second-days have no way to properly represent leap-seconds, positive or negative. You can't fit 86401 pegs in 86400 holes, nor fill all 86400 holes with 86399 pegs. This is the root of the great leap-second controversy, the incommensurability between UTC with leap-seconds and systems with fixed 86400-second-days, which has been raging since at least 1999. The leap year is algorithmically predicable and doesn't cause interoperability problems. -Brooks