date -d and the leapsecond

[Dr. David Alan Gilbert]

Hi,
  I've noticed that there is a change in behaviour where in recent
CVS, date -d will not accept a second count of 60 - i.e.

date -d "Sat Dec 31 23:59:60 UTC 2005"

gives 'invalid date' - where as the older 5.2.1 accepts it
(and gives midnight Jan 1).

Now as I understand it the Unix time can't represent the
leapsecond in the seconds-since-epoch, but if that is a valid
UTC date then should it really accept it as input ?

There also appears to be an inconsistency in the documentation;
in the info page '27.3 Time of day items' it states:

    SECOND is a number between 0 and 59

In the --help output of date it says:

  %S   second (00..60); the 60 is necessary to accommodate a leap second

(Does date ever generate a value of 60 seconds on non-Unix systems?)

Dave
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