section_path: Definition
section_name: Definition
paragraph_text: Definition
  
  Unix time is currently defined as the number of non-leap seconds which have passed since 00:00:00 UTC on Thursday, 1 January 1970, which is referred to as the Unix epoch. Unix time is typically encoded as a signed integer.
  
  The Unix time 0 is exactly midnight UTC on 1 January 1970, with Unix time incrementing by 1 for every non-leap second after this. For example, 00:00:00 UTC on 1 January 1971 is represented in Unix time as 31 536 000. Negative values, on systems that support them, indicate times before the Unix epoch, with the value decreasing by 1 for every non-leap second before the epoch. For example, 00:00:00 UTC on 1 January 1969 is represented in Unix time as −31 536 000. Every day in Unix time consists of exactly 86 400 seconds.
  
  Unix time is sometimes referred to as Epoch time. This can be misleading since Unix time is not the only time system based on an epoch and the Unix epoch is not the only epoch used by other time systems.