[tz] Israel POSIX timezone string error on release 2017b?

Zefram zefram at fysh.org
Fri Aug 4 23:08:35 UTC 2017


Andre Domingos Brizido wrote:
>the last line of the time zone database may contain the POSIX timezone
>string,

Not really "the", as that implies that there's only one applicable
to the zone, and in particular implies that it describes the zone's
whole behaviour or at least its current behaviour.  The purpose of the
rule given at that point in the tzfile is specifically to describe the
(projected) future behaviour of the zone following the last explicit
transition.

>But if I understood correctly, the POSIX specification
>(http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/) states that the value
>'26' is out of range. It should  be between zero and 24.

The current version of the tzfile format uses a not-quite-POSIX-TZ
string format in which some of these bounds are explicitly looser
than they are in POSIX.  This was done so that essentially any DST
rule understood by zic can be expressed in a tzfile.  Tzfile parsers,
if they're interested in future behaviour past 2038, need to understand
this more liberal format.

This change comes at the expense of the ability to feed the TZish line
from a tzfile into anything that understands the POSIX TZ format and
get meaningful results.  But, because of the limited significance of
that part of the tzfile format as discussed above, the results that one
could get were of limited utility anyway, only useful in conjunction
with the tzfile's explicit transitions.  This line from the tzfile was
never a suitable substitute for the full tzfile, even when one is only
concerned about current times.

>My linux system does not display the correct timezone if I use the string
>'IST-2IDT,M3.4.4/26,M10.5.0' as the contents of /etc/TZ.

There is no POSIX TZ string that expresses the DST rules represented by
that string.  (Let alone the rules used by Israel prior to 2013, which
depended on the Hebrew calendar and were not even understood by zic.)

-zefram


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