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Many computer systems measure time and date using Unix time, an international standard for digital timekeeping.Unix time is defined as the number of seconds elapsed since 00:00:00 UTC on 1 January 1970 (an arbitrarily chosen time based on the creation of the first Unix system), which has been dubbed the Unix epoch.
Many existing file formats, communications protocols, and application interfaces employ a variant of the Unix time_t date format, storing the number of seconds since the Unix Epoch (midnight UTC, 1 January 1970) as an unsigned 32-bit binary integer. This value will roll over on 7 February 2106 at 06:28:16 UTC.
The quotient is the number of days since the epoch, and the modulus is the number of seconds since midnight UTC on that day. If given a Unix time number that is ambiguous due to a positive leap second, this algorithm interprets it as the time just after midnight. It never generates a time that is during a leap second.
The following table lists epoch dates used by popular software and other computer-related systems. The time in these systems is stored as the quantity of a particular time unit (days, seconds, nanoseconds, etc.) that has elapsed since a stated time (usually midnight UTC at the beginning of the given date).
System time is measured by a system clock, which is typically implemented as a simple count of the number of ticks that have transpired since some arbitrary starting date, called the epoch. For example, Unix and POSIX -compliant systems encode system time (" Unix time ") as the number of seconds elapsed since the start of the Unix epoch at 1 ...
An epoch in computing is the time at which the representation is zero. For example, Unix time is represented as the number of seconds since 00:00:00 UTC on 1 January 1970, not counting leap seconds. An epoch in astronomy is a reference time used for consistency in
The latest time that can be represented in this form is 03:14:07 UTC on Tuesday, 19 January 2038 (corresponding to 2,147,483,647 seconds since the start of the epoch). This means that systems using a 32-bit time_t type are susceptible to the Year 2038 problem. [9]
The database attempts to record historical time zones and all civil changes since 1970, the Unix time epoch. [7] It also records leap seconds. [8] The database, as well as some reference source code, is in the public domain. [9] New editions of the database and code are published as changes warrant, usually several times per year. [10]