24:00 versus 23:59:59--another possibility

Yet another possibility is to add a special case to zic to treat instances of 23:59:59 as if they were 24:00; this lets us use 23:59:59 in input files to make pre-1998 versions of zic happy and to get correct-to-the-second results out of post-2009 versions of zic. --ado

"Arthur" == Arthur David Olson <Olson> writes:
Arthur> Yet another possibility is to add a special case to zic to Arthur> treat instances of 23:59:59 as if they were 24:00; this lets Arthur> us use 23:59:59 in input files to make pre-1998 versions of Arthur> zic happy and to get correct-to-the-second results out of Arthur> post-2009 versions of zic. I don't like that idea. Backward compatibility with an 11 year obsolete version that produces wrong answers for a 1 year old version is not the right tradeoff. If 24:00:00 produced error messages in a version of zic that was, say, 3-4 years old, that would be different. But I can't see any reason to accommodate a version that's 11 years old. So make it 24:00 and let people know they need a version of zic that isn't antique. paul

As one who doesn't use zic, my preference is to do it "properly" with 24:00 - but other non-zic based users may have problems with this. Perhaps the best thing is to use 24:00 but to comment it forusers of old zic releases or other users for whom this causes a problem? Tim Smartcom Software Ltd Portsmouth Technopole Kingston Crescent Portsmouth PO2 8FA United Kingdom www.smartcomsoftware.com Smartcom Software is a limited company registered in England and Wales, registered number 05641521. -----Original Message----- From: Olson, Arthur David (NIH/NCI) [E] [mailto:olsona@dc37a.nci.nih.gov] Sent: 28 April 2009 12:54 To: tz@lecserver.nci.nih.gov Subject: 24:00 versus 23:59:59--another possibility Yet another possibility is to add a special case to zic to treat instances of 23:59:59 as if they were 24:00; this lets us use 23:59:59 in input files to make pre-1998 versions of zic happy and to get correct-to-the-second results out of post-2009 versions of zic. --ado
participants (3)
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Olson, Arthur David (NIH/NCI) [E]
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Paul Koning
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Tim Thornton