TIME2POSIX(3)

NAME
time2posix, posix2time - convert seconds since the Epoch

SYNOPSIS
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <time.h>

time_t time2posix(t)
time_t t

time_t posix2time(t)
time_t t

cc ... -ltz

DESCRIPTION
IEEE Standard 1003.1 (POSIX) legislates that a time_t value of 536457599 shall correspond to "Wed Dec 31 23:59:59 UTC 1986." This effectively implies that POSIX time_t's cannot include leap seconds and, therefore, that the system time must be adjusted as each leap occurs.

If the time package is configured with leap-second support enabled, however, no such adjustment is needed and time_t values continue to increase over leap events (as a true `seconds since...' value). This means that these values will differ from those required by POSIX by the net number of leap seconds inserted since the Epoch.

Typically this is not a problem as the type time_t is intended to be (mostly) opaque—time_t values should only be obtained-from and passed-to functions such as time(2), localtime(3), mktime(3), and difftime(3). However, POSIX gives an arithmetic expression for directly computing a time_t value from a given date/time, and the same relationship is assumed by some (usually older) applications. Any programs creating/dissecting time_t's using such a relationship will typically not handle intervals over leap seconds correctly.

The time2posix and posix2time functions are provided to address this time_t mismatch by converting between local time_t values and their POSIX equivalents. This is done by accounting for the number of time-base changes that would have taken place on a POSIX system as leap seconds were inserted or deleted. These converted values can then be used in lieu of correcting the older applications, or when communicating with POSIX-compliant systems.

Time2posix is single-valued. That is, every local time_t corresponds to a single POSIX time_t. Posix2time is less well-behaved: for a positive leap second hit the result is not unique, and for a negative leap second hit the corresponding POSIX time_t doesn't exist so an adjacent value is returned. Both of these are good indicators of the inferiority of the POSIX representation.

The following table summarizes the relationship between a time T and it's conversion to, and back from, the POSIX representation over the leap second inserted at the end of June, 1993.
DATE	TIME	T	X=time2posix(T)	posix2time(X)
93/06/30	23:59:59	A+0	B+0	A+0
93/06/30	23:59:60	A+1	B+1	A+1 or A+2
93/07/01	00:00:00	A+2	B+1	A+1 or A+2
93/07/01	00:00:01	A+3	B+2	A+3

A leap second deletion would look like...

DATE	TIME	T	X=time2posix(T)	posix2time(X)
??/06/30	23:59:58	A+0	B+0	A+0
??/07/01	00:00:00	A+1	B+2	A+1
??/07/01	00:00:01	A+2	B+3	A+2

	[Note: posix2time(B+1) => A+0 or A+1]

If leap-second support is not enabled, local time_t's and POSIX time_t's are equivalent, and both time2posix and posix2time degenerate to the identity function.

SEE ALSO
difftime(3), localtime(3), mktime(3), time(2)