Conversation with Ron Tolley

Mark Horton seismo!cbpavo.MIS.OH.ATT.COM!mark
Mon Dec 8 18:27:34 UTC 1986


I also think going to a new environment variable such as ZONE (I'd rather
see it called TIMEZONE) is the best choice; there's nothing to prevent the
system from defining both TZ (for upward compatbility) and TIMEZONE (for
new software which checks for it first.)

I think that any standard that requires that TZ do anything may be a mistake;
if the standard says that a missing TZ means something, then any upward
compatible future standard based on another variable will lose big.  It
would be best if comments about what to do if TZ is missing were made in
such a way that they are just a fallback, not a way for a program to get
a guaranteed behavior.

	Mark



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