Linux-kernel mailing list archive 2000-02,: Re: February 30th 2000

# Re: February 30th 2000

Richard B. Johnson (root@chaos.analogic.com)
Wed, 12 Jan 2000 16:19:47 -0500 (EST)

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On Wed, 12 Jan 2000, Daniel Lafraia wrote:

> Hi Folks,
>
> This year we're going to have the day February 30th and neither Linux, AIX,
> Windows NT, 98, 95 know this problem. Feb30th happens each 400 years (Last
> time we had that was year 1600). There's a webpage (in portuguese) from IDG
> http://www.uol.com.br/idgnow/corp/corp2000-01-10e.shl (you can translate it
> at http://babelfish.altavista.com/cgi-bin/translate)
>
> Also check out:
> http://www.isoft.itil.com/bluncal_home.htm
>
> [lafraia@cpu lafraia]$ cal 2 2000
> February 2000
> Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
> 1 2 3 4 5
> 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
> 13 14 15 16 17 18 19
> 20 21 22 23 24 25 26
> 27 28 29
>
> C:\WINDOWS>date
> Current date is Wed 01-12-2000
> Enter new date (mm-dd-yy): 02-30-2000
>
> Invalid date
> Enter new date (mm-dd-yy): 02-30-00
>
> Invalid date
> Enter new date (mm-dd-yy):
>
> Does anybody know a workaround for this?
>
> See ya,
> Daniel Lafraia

This "problem" was handled in the '50s when the National Bureau of
Standards, with the cooperation of the rest of the world's standards
bureaus created the notion of the leap-second. The NBS is now
known as NIST. They have a web-page www.nist.gov which is kind of
interesting. The leap-second swallows the time necessary to make
our time correspond with the rest of the time in the known universe,
in little increments, rather than having to add a whole day once
every 400 years. Further, it keeps daytime time in the daylight.

So there is no Feb 30, 2000.

Cheers,
Dick Johnson

Penguin : Linux version 2.3.36 on an i686 machine (400.59 BogoMips).

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