What is a leap second

[Steve Langasek]

On Tue, Oct 29, 2002 at 11:44:18PM +0000, David Laight wrote:

> What isn't clear (form the associated standards) is what you should do
> to the system clock at the point the leap second is added/subtracted.
> (Due to variations in the moment of intertia of the earth there
> have been seconds added aas well as  subtracted, even though the earth's
> rotation is slowing down because the moon keeps stealing angular
> momentum from it.)

Well, if your system clock keeps proper time as measured in seconds since
the epoch in UTC :), you don't need to do anything to the system clock;
the leap seconds should then be applied when displaying time in the local
time zone.

Steve Langasek
postmodern programmer