time zone library

[Olson, Arthur David (NIH/NCI) [E]]

> My second question concerns leap seconds.  It appears that the leap
> second data is associated with every zone file.  Why isn't it simply
the
> same for everything, and global?

There was a year when New York observed the leap second at midnight
local time rather than midnight UCT; this allowed the countdown at Times
Square to go "3...2...1...leap...Happy New Year." While the data files
reflect the legal reality of the situation, we've left code in place to
allow oddball observance of leap seconds for those who want it. A
consequence is that leap data must be stored on a zone-by-zone basis.
The amount of leap data per zone is, of course, fairly small.

        --ado