cvs commit: src/usr.bin/touch touch.1 touch.c

[M. Warner Losh]

In message: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0704101101450.24971 at hermes-1.csi.cam.ac.uk>
            Tony Finch <dot at dotat.at> writes:
: On Tue, 10 Apr 2007, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote:
: >
: > The definition of time_t is simply a number of seconds since a
: > specified event.
: 
: ... modulo leap second adjustments.
: 
: time_t cannot encode UTC correctly since you need more than a simple
: scalar to do so (e.g. you need a TAI offset or a leap second flag).

Yes.  POSIX defined time_t to be UTC, and then forgot that there's
leap seconds in UTC.  UTC uses a variable radix notation for just such
events, which translates poorly to a single number.  Or at least
translates poorly to time_t which is defined such that one cannot take
them into account.

Warner