Most systems that deals with time has a slightly different way of doing it than U*ix.. ref: CCIR 457-1
Like this: 56113.6294791667 56113.6301736111 56113 is MJD, modified julian date (http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/mjd.html) Want to knew the time between two observations, just subtract and you get days and fraction of day. (I's about 60sec between the lines above..) --P Ps: Tops20/Twenex/Tenex keeps the kernel time this way, in 18+18 bits... > On 7/3/12, Vadim Antonov <a...@kotovnik.com> wrote: > > There's always a possibility of using pseudo-TAI internally by > > reconstructing it from UTC. This is not the best solution (because it > > requires systems to have long-term memory of past leap seconds, or > How about, instead of requiring systems to "remember" past leap seconds; > > You represent every single timestamp instead of as > timestamp = <32-bit int, seconds since jan 1 1970 00:00:00> > > You represent all system timestamps as tuples: > timestamp = ( <32-bint int seconds since jan 1 1970 00:00:00>, > <integer representing the leap-second offset > since jan 1 1970> ) > > No need to retain a history. Just retain the data in the same way > that Hours, Minutes, and Second are retained. > Comparison is simple. > > (Timestamp2 - Offset2) - (Timestamp1 - Offset1) > > > The downside is you can no longer set your system clock by hand, > because humans won't know the right number of "leap seconds" to > supply when setting the time from their wall clock. > > That's a problem necesitating you keep a history anyways. > For time to be universally coordinated, it has to be coordinated. > > One of the basic requirements for system time is that it interacts > with humans, and > humans have to be able to set their clock from conventional time > sources which are based on local time, without the machine having to > be constantly updated or reach out on a network and figure out how > that translates into a reasonable machine time. > > -- > -JH > >
