[tz] OpenJDK/CLDR/ICU/Joda issues with Ireland change
Paul Eggert
eggert at cs.ucla.edu
Fri Jan 26 17:35:46 UTC 2018
Robert Elz wrote:
> From: Paul Eggert<eggert at cs.ucla.edu>
> Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2018 07:39:30 -0800
> Subject: Re: [tz] OpenJDK/CLDR/ICU/Joda issues with Ireland change
>
> | Unfortunately tm_gmtoff is not standardized by C or POSIX, perhaps
> | because standardizers mistakenly thought that strftime %z was enough.
>
> No, it would have been because tm_gmtoff isn't available everywhere
> (and most particularly, wasn't available on the main reference system
> from which most of POSIX was copied.)
strftime %z wasn't available on the main reference system either, nor was it
universally supported, and yet it was added to the C standard. Since tm_gmtoff
and tm_zone are supported by GNU/Linux and by the BSDs, they're pretty much
everywhere but in traditional APIs such as AIX and Solaris. The main objecting
to adding them there, as I understand it, is that it requires changing the size
of 'struct tm' and that this is more of hassle than adding a conversion spec to
strftime. Unfortunately strftime "%z" doesn't suffice to determine the full UT
offset.
I used to be a regular contributor to POSIX standardization but dropped out due
to lack of time. If there is a way I could contribute in the timestamp area (but
not get deluged by other topics) I'd could resume.
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