[tz] When will physics make 32-bit signed leap-second counts obsolete?

Paul Eggert eggert at cs.ucla.edu
Thu Sep 27 15:45:23 UTC 2018


A while ago I vaguely remember a prediction on this list of when the 
TZif file format will become obsolete because we have accumulated 2**31 
total leap seconds if we continue to just add leap seconds as needed to 
keep UTC roughly in sync with TAI. To some extent this is just a playful 
prediction, as the format will undoubtedly become obsolete for other 
reasons long before then, but it's still fun to predict. Unfortunately I 
don't remember the details, and a quick Google search didn't find it. 
Does anyone else remember this? If not, I'll have to recalculate.

The topic has just come up again on the tzdist-bis mailing list, which 
is why I'm thinking about it again. See 
<https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/tzdist-bis/Q7OVmd60wydqcJahS3QRNHwtXHM>.



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