[tz] posix for asia/tehran is wrong

Paul Eggert eggert at cs.ucla.edu
Fri Nov 30 08:58:17 UTC 2018


Guy Harris wrote:
> the correct POSIX TZ setting for Iran, at least as I read the SUS, would be "<+0330>-3:30<+0430>,J81/0,J265/0"

As I mentioned in my previous email, there is no POSIX TZ setting for Iran 
because its DST changes don't follow the Gregorian calendar. The string at the 
end of the Asia/Tehran file is just an approximation. As near as I can tell, the 
string "<+0330>-3:30<+0430>,J80/0,J264/0" at the end of the Asia/Tehran file has 
the same behavior as the approximation that the "asia" file uses for far-future 
timestamps in Asia/Tehran. So we should be OK here.

> omitting the "J" is not even valid for January and February,

I don't see why not. POSIX says that omitting the J makes it possible to specify 
February 29, so clearly omitting the J is valid for pre-March dates.

> zic should probably either:
> 
> 	... always put the "J" in

But always putting the "J" in, even when not needed, adds a byte to the output 
file for rules in January and February.
> or
> 
> 	go with 0-based Julian days

That wouldn't be useful for dates after February, as tzdb Rule lines for those 
dates never correspond to 0-based Julian days.


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