meltingwax

Thanks for clarifying my statement!

Here's an example:

I have packets read from an instrument which are timestamped in seconds since 1980-01-06 (GPS Epoch). To compute each packet's proper datetime representation in TAI, I need add those seconds to 1980-01-06, and subtract the amount of leap seconds that occurred. The subtracting of leap seconds could be done automatically by a library. When a leap second is added, it will occur on the 61st second of the minute (second = :60). These times aren't supported by the datetime class.

When the mapping between a time_t and a "human readable format" (hours, minutes, seconds, etc) takes into account extra leap seconds. You could use time_t underneath, if that's what you really wanted to do.

As my co-worker once put it, "time is a four letter word."

At the very least, there is a need for showing the occasional 61st second of a minute, and adding a time and timedelta where leap seconds is taken into account.

This is designed for programmers of user facing applications. For science and engineering, it does not address the problems, eg lack of leap seconds.

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