Posted by Sig on 06/23/07 06:28

On Sat, 23 Jun 2007 01:04:46 -0400 David T. Ashley said
> Is it true on my system that the Unix time may skip up or down by one second
> at midnight when there is a leap second?
>
> By "Unix time" I mean the integer returned by time() and similar functions.
>
> I'm concerned about the "down" case. Some of the software I've written
> assumes monotonically-increasing time.

I don't think you have to worry.

(1) NIST says "Based on what we know about the earth's rotation, it seems
unlikely that we will ever have a negative leap second."
<http://tf.nist.gov/general/leaps.htm#Anchor-52904>

(2) If it did happen, the time would repeat, not go backwards.

Sig

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