Tim Peters wrote:
The ECMAScript std (nee Javascript) has, I think, a good example of a usable facility that refused to get mired down in impossible details; e.g., it flat-out refuses to recognize leap seconds. mxDateTime is similarly sane, but MAL keeps threatening to flirt with insanity <wink>.
FYI, mxDateTime test the C lib for leap second support; if leap seconds are used, then it has to support these too in conversions from and to Unix ticks.
BTW, I doubt there'd be any discussion of leap seconds in the C std if some astronomers hadn't been early Unix users. It's never a net win in the end to try to make a scientist happy <0.9 wink>.
What strange about leap seconds is that they don't fit well with the idea of counting seconds since some fixed point in history. They are only useful for conversions from this count to a broken down date and time representation.... time simply doesn't leap.