[tz] Rule names

[Robert Elz]

    Date:        Fri, 1 Feb 2013 16:41:27 +0000
    From:        "Osko, Galatea" <Galatea.Osko at morganstanley.com>
    Message-ID:  <45DF782DF3A8CF429AFEE49ED2F9FF700B90EE6E at OZWEX0202N2.msad.ms.com>

  | Can anyone please advise on where I can find the Rule name history
  | for each country/region?

If you really mean the rule history, then you might mean one of two things,
either what times applied going back in history, for which (as much as we
know) you can just look in the sources for the data files (the actual data,
and comments to explain why it is as it is) can be found there.

If you mean the history of the tz project, in that you're trying to check
how we have updated the rules over time as things have changed, or we have
obtained more information, then you can fetch copies of (just about) every
tz release that has ever been made from either the iana server, or (using ftp
only) from munnari.oz.au (in pub/old-tz) and analyse them yourself.

On the other hand, if you really mean the history of the rule names, then
that makes no real sense, and would be pointless.

  | The data I'm interested in is as follows:
  | 
  | - AQ, Oz: I don't know to which area/country this is referring to as it is
  | not listed on tiscali

AQ represents two different things in tzdata - it is the country code for
antarctica, and it is the name for the rules for Queensland (Aust).

OZ doesn't appear in the tzdata at all (and never has) other than as a
part of the domain name munnari.oz.au

  | - C-Eur, E-EurAsia - are these valid/active rule names in use?

Yes, they are.   C-Eur gives some rules that apply in central Europe.
E-Eur is for eastern Europe, E-EurAsia is a copy of come of the E-Eur
rules that apply in Tbilisi (which is in Asia).  We don't do cross-file
rules, so the rules for Asia need to be in the asia file, and E-EurAsia
is what we call those.

  | And I also have some other countries like Pakistan, Palestine where I would
  | like to check the DST history.

For those you just look in the tzdata source files (of course, you only
get as much information as we have managed to collect, and some of our
historical information - anything before 1970 - is a bit sketchy, and could
be inaccurate (corrections, especially when supported by good sources,
always appreciated.)

I still cannot even begin to understand what you're looking for when you're
concentrating on rule names - they have absolutely no independent meaning at
all.   The rules are useful information, their names are just a label so the
rules can be referred to.

kre