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Clarify that Unix timestamps disregard leap seconds since 1970 #1627

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merged 3 commits into from Aug 24, 2023
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Clarify that Unix timestamps disregard leap seconds since 1970 #1627

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47da6ad
Clarify that Unix timestamps disregard leap seconds since 1970
heinrich5991 Aug 22, 2023
85c53a4
Simplify timestamp explanation
heinrich5991 Aug 23, 2023
a9700fc
Apply suggestions from code review
richvdh Aug 24, 2023
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1 change: 1 addition & 0 deletions changelogs/appendices/newsfragments/1627.clarification
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Clarify timestamp specification with respect to leap seconds.
13 changes: 10 additions & 3 deletions content/_index.md
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Expand Up @@ -419,9 +419,16 @@ into the `m.` namespace.

### Timestamps

Unless otherwise stated, timestamps are measured as milliseconds since
the Unix epoch. Throughout the specification this may be referred to as
POSIX, Unix, or just "time in milliseconds".
Unless otherwise stated, timestamps are the number of milliseconds
elapsed since the unix epoch (1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC), but not counting
leap seconds, so that each day is precisely 86,400,000 milliseconds.

This means that timestamps can repeat during leap seconds. Most
programming languages provide timestamps in that format natively, e.g.
[ECMAScript](https://tc39.es/ecma262/multipage/numbers-and-dates.html#sec-time-values-and-time-range).
Throughout the specification this may be referred to as POSIX,
[Unix](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_time), or just "time in
milliseconds".

## Specification Versions

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