3 ms·
Go ahead and correct it on Wikipedia, I double-checked my understanding against the entry there before posting my message, and re-reading it I think my descript
by linsomniac 3y ago
Go ahead and correct it on Wikipedia, I double-checked my understanding against the entry there before posting my message, and re-reading it I think my description matched Wikipedia.
You'll also need to correct it in the time(2) man page, which says:
"number of seconds since the Epoch, 1970-01-01 00:00:00 +0000 (UTC)." (ubuntu 22.04)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_time
- zokier 3y agoThe time(2) manpage also states POSIX.1 defines "seconds since the Epoch" using a formula that approximates the number of seconds between a specified time and the Epoch. [...] This value is not the same as the actual number of seconds between the time and the Epoch, because of leap seconds and because system clocks are not required to be synchronized to a standard reference [...] see POSIX.1-2008 Rationale A.4.15 for further rationale https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man2/time.2.html#VERSIONS https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man2/time.2.html#VERSIONS The word approximates is carrying a lot of weight here. So basically "seconds since the epoch" is a posix codephrase which doesn't actually mean what you'd naively think it does. Why this useful info is buried in the VERSIONS section instead of the main DESCRIPTION I don't know. For Wikipedia, there is already discussion about the confusing wording of the opening paragraph: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Unix_time#Flat_out_wrong https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Unix_time#Flat_out_wrong? but the body of the article is mostly better, and especially the table showing what happens during leap second should clarify matters.