[tz] trailing whitespace in IERS leap-seconds.list file

[Paul Eggert]

On Tue, 9 Jan 2024 10:02:34 +0100, Christian Bizouard wrote:

> I have just remove that  trailing space character, including the script 
> that generates this file.

Thanks. I installed this into TZDB's development repository by applying 
the attached patch. This patch changes leap-seconds.list to be a copy of 
the IERS version instead of the NIST version, which as a side effect 
changes comments and white space and expiration date and checksums to 
match the IERS copy,

I now see a timestamp discrepancy, though. The timestamp of the file 
(contained in the HTTP header for 
<https://hpiers.obspm.fr/iers/bul/bulc/ntp/leap-seconds.list>) is:

   Last-Modified: Tue, 09 Jan 2024 08:56:09 GMT

The timestamp within the file, though, is:

   #	The following line shows the last update of this file in NTP timestamp:
   #
   #$	3913697179

This is the number of seconds since 1900-01-01 00:00:00 (not counting 
leap seconds), and I compute this to be 2024-01-08 10:06:19 UTC.

Given the timestamp of your email, the HTTP header timestamp seems to be 
right and the file's internal NTP timestamp seems to be wrong.

My theory is that "the last update of this file" does not actually mean 
the last update of the file (which would include its comment lines and 
white space); it is talking merely about the last update of lines 
starting with non-"#" (the leap second lines) and the line starting with 
"#@" (the expiration date), ignoring any whitespace changes in those lines.

If my theory is correct, it would be helpful to change "the last update 
of this file" to "the last update of this file's leap second data and 
expiration date". That would better reflect how the file is actually 
maintained.

PS. I hope you don't mind this trivia - sometimes I think that's largely 
what we do at TZDB....
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