[tz] "Standard byte order"

Zefram zefram at fysh.org
Fri Nov 4 20:24:29 UTC 2011


Guy Harris wrote:
>If not all strings in a time zone data file are required to be ASCII,
>then we should perhaps specify that they're UTF-8.

They are in fact all ASCII, and we have a maintenance policy that
the abbreviations should always be only ASCII (see the "Time zone
abbreviations" section in Theory).  This is indeed an omission from
tzfile(5).  I think we should document that they are strictly printable
ASCII.  We have no need to accommodate free text, and so can get away
without incurring the complications of Unicode.

-zefram



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