"David T. Lewis" <lewis at mail.msen.com> wrote:
> 
> 1) A primitive to answer seconds (or milliseconds) since the dawn of time.
> We should not use the existing Time>>primDateAndTimeNow because it is not
> a monotonically increasing function (its values jump forward and backward
> when you cross a daylight savings time boundary).
> 
> 2) A primitive to answer the offset of local time versus UTC, for purposes
> of calculating local time and date. This offset varies by timezone as
> well as by the effect of daylight savings time conventions.

It seems that these two items should be tied into a single atomic
primitive; that way you avoid the problem of querying the time just
before a daylight switch, and then querying the offset afterwards. 
Okay, it's unlikely, but putting the queries into a single atomic
primitive makes reasoning about it much easier.



Lex