Thanks to Alastair McKinstry for a prompt reply
My orginal question was:
Dear Unix gurus
I am just adding some date output to a script. When checking the format
for seconds on the date man page, the code for seconds was described as
this:
S Displays the second as a decimal number (00 to 61).
I am be stupid or had dec redefined the number of seconds in a minute?
Alastairs reply was
Extra seconds, called 'leap seconds' are added occasionally to bring the
atomic clocks around the world into sync with the Earth's rotation; there
have been about 20 leap seconds since 1970. Hence, '17:59:60' can be a
valid time. This may happen in particular if you are using a protocol
such as xntp to update system clocks automatically from a precise source,
such as an atomic clock.
So now we know!
Simon Millard
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Received on Thu Jun 11 1998 - 14:16:55 NZST