[tz] EST/EDT vs AEST/AEDT in AQ [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]

[Clive D.W. Feather]

Gwillim Law said:
> When I was a data administrator, one of the most fundamental principles I
> learned was not to try to embed one field as a code inside another one.
[...]
> (Some programmers love to think up tricks like that, in order
> to save a line or two of code.) It's just not a good data design. The tz
> database contains a field that's defined as the offset from standard time,
> and it's expressed as a time, not a letter code. Force the programmers to
> use that field. Never suggest that the next-to-last letter can be used
> instead.

Hear, hear.

These abbreviations are there for hysterical raisins (as we used to call
it in my youth). They're already fundamentally broken - trying to add
structure to them is doomed.

-- 
Clive D.W. Feather          | If you lie to the compiler,
Email: clive at davros.org     | it will get its revenge.
Web: http://www.davros.org  |   - Henry Spencer
Mobile: +44 7973 377646