Nixon Switch [was: Linux "date" command ignores leap-seconds?]

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| To: tlug-lxSQFCZeNF4 at public.gmane.org

| On 13-01-17 04:26 PM, D. Hugh Redelmeier wrote:
| > Of course POSIX says the Epock starts in
| > Nixon's reign.  (Who remembers the Nixon Switch in UNIX?)
| 
| This has been intriguing me for days, and my Google-fu is inadequate to
| the task. What was the Nixon Switch in UNIX?

<http://tukg.org/doc/unix/PDP-11/Distributions/research/Dennis_v5/v5man.pdf>

If you look in the 5th edition manual under ctime(III), you will see

	The external variable nixonflg if non-zero supersedes daylight
	and causes daylight time all year round.

That's because Nixon changed Daylight Savings Time rules for 1974 and
1975 in response to the 1973 oil crisis.  I think that he made it
all-year round.

I no longer remember how one would set this external variable.

<https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt.folklore.computers/jH6BAi5W1Vo/ZSszNv7NS98J>
<https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt.folklore.computers/jH6BAi5W1Vo/Npotf09TXnAJ>

It sounds as if the setting were compiled into the library.
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