I think for the stretch of time where a leap second is smeared, the epoch second would drift by a tiny fraction for each second or etc? So you'd have some chunk of UTC time where each second lasts something like 1.0005 epoch seconds, maybe? This would make converting from unix time to UTC need extra arbitrary handling for display, at least.
> I think for the stretch of time where a leap second is smeared, the epoch second would drift by a tiny fraction for each second or etc? So you'd have some chunk of UTC time where each second lasts something like 1.0005 epoch seconds, maybe?
Yes, 1.0000116s (or 0.9999884s), and to be clear it was never intended like that. It got started after a bunch of bugs in leap second handling caused issues & some people thought it would be better to just stretch/compress time for a period around leap seconds, for docs refer to e.g.: https://developers.google.com/time/smear
Personally speaking - it's a great way of just pushing the problem around, further complicating an already complex situation. 11.6µs is very measurable on a modern system.
> This would make converting from unix time to UTC need extra arbitrary handling for display, at least.
Except you need to know that leap smearing has been applied… which of course noone records. Most systems can't even signal it, much less store. If you need that level of precision, you better make sure none of your systems uses it or you're just screwed.
If you're relying on system time for subsecond precision, you're already screwed on every other day that doesn't have leap seconds.
> 11.6µs is very measurable on a modern system.
11.6µs is very measurable.
Clock skew of 11.6 PPM is much more subtle.