--- title: Considering Strictly Monotonic Time | daily.dev description: Monotonic time systems typically clamp OS-provided timestamps to prevent non-monotonic behavior in edge cases. By incrementing the last timestamp by one... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/considering-strictly-monotonic-time-0lyxvhq6c twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Considering Strictly Monotonic Time | daily.dev og:description: Monotonic time systems typically clamp OS-provided timestamps to prevent non-monotonic behavior in edge cases. By incrementing the last timestamp by one... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/considering-strictly-monotonic-time-0lyxvhq6c og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/0LyxVhQ6c.png og:image:alt: Considering Strictly Monotonic Time og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Considering Strictly Monotonic Time **[matklad](https://daily.dev/sources/matklad)** · 2 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Monotonic time systems typically clamp OS-provided timestamps to prevent non-monotonic behavior in edge cases. By incrementing the last timestamp by one nanosecond instead of just clamping, you can enforce strictly monotonic time where each call returns a unique value. This enables stronger assertions and eliminates ambiguity about whether two identical timestamps came from the same call or different calls at the same moment. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Time Without a Shared Clock: Rethinking Distributed Computing \#7](https://daily.dev/posts/time-without-a-shared-clock-rethinking-distributed-computing-7-dp1qjka8q) · Medium · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Clock Synchronization Is a Nightmare](https://daily.dev/posts/clock-synchronization-is-a-nightmare-uxf2ft5vt) · Hacker News · 2 upvotes · 0 comments - [Tracking Time Without Clock](https://daily.dev/posts/tracking-time-without-clock-x7gtqv6gr) · Lobsters · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Well Timed Double Checking](https://daily.dev/posts/well-timed-double-checking-mxnozt2lo) · The Daily WTF · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Time is an illusion, CLOCK\_REALTIME, doubly so...](https://daily.dev/posts/time-is-an-illusion-clock-realtime-doubly-so--hycuaz0ky) · Rambling Comments · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#rust](https://daily.dev/tags/rust) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/considering-strictly-monotonic-time-0lyxvhq6c) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Considering Strictly Monotonic Time","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/considering-strictly-monotonic-time-0lyxvhq6c","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/considering-strictly-monotonic-time-0lyxvhq6c"},"datePublished":"2026-01-23T18:29:22.975Z","dateModified":"2026-01-23T18:29:37.828Z","description":"Monotonic time systems typically clamp OS-provided timestamps to prevent non-monotonic behavior in edge cases. 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