time since the epoch

Keith Wansbrough Keith.Wansbrough@cl.cam.ac.uk
Thu, 06 Feb 2003 17:46:22 +0000


Stefan Karrmann <sk@mathematik.uni-ulm.de> writes:

> A sound base for a Time implementation should use TAI (temps atomique
> international), c.f. <http://cr.yp.to/libtai.html>.

I disagree; I think UTC is quite sufficient, and will match the users'
expectations much better.  (executive summary: UTC is the time on your
watch (+/- timezone of course), TAI is behind by a few seconds, and
this difference changes each time there's a new leap second).

However, the reference above is not to TAI, but to a library called
libtai.  I don't know anything about this; Stefan, maybe you could
tell us some more?

--KW 8-)