In article <20050212150528.GH4062@momenergy.repetae.net>,
John Meacham
which will do its best to get the current TAI time (subject to system interfaces). which may be just converting from POSIX time with the most up-to-date leap second table, but very well might do something better on some systems.
Doing this sort of "whatever's best" has problems. We have to provide a single library that people will compile in to their programs, and a single binary may run on systems with different resources available. I'd rather give users the tools they need to get the table or to get TAI in explicit ways, rather than doing a bunch of unknown stuff such as file access behind the scenes. This way people can come up with their own strategies for the kind of reliability they need. Something like this, perhaps: parseLeapSecondTableFromUSNO :: ReadS LeapSecondTable parseLeapSecondTableFromLibTAI :: ReadS LeapSecondTable getLeapSecondTableFromLibTAI :: FilePath -> IO LeapSecondTable -- Ashley Yakeley, Seattle WA