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

[Martin Burnicki]

Paul Eggert via tz wrote:
> 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.

3913697179 / 2024-01-08 10:06:19 is obviously related to the creation 
date of the original version of the file.

Please keep in mind that originally, leap-seconds.list has been a 
symbolic link to the original file, in this case leap-seconds.3913697179.

This has been the case since the file format was introduced by Judah 
Levine and David L. Mills in 2000.

So actually, the file extension of the original file and the last update 
timestamp inside the file should be the same, and match the creation 
date of the file, in this case 3913697179 for the original file.

I don't know the script that creates the file, but it looks like this 
basically works correctly.

I'm assuming that for the latest change to remove the trailing space, 
the script has been updated and also the existing original file has been 
modified.

A proper solution would probably be to re-run the script to create a new 
file, without trailing space, but with consistent "last update" time 
stamp and file name ending, and file time.

Since the basic information in the file doesn't change, creating a new 
one should do no harm to folks who already use the version from January, 8.

Martin
-- 
Martin Burnicki

Senior Software Engineer

MEINBERG Funkuhren GmbH & Co. KG
Email: martin.burnicki at meinberg.de
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