ATT System V Rlease 3.1 and Timezones

[Dennis L. Mumaugh]

The P.55 Timezone Proposal has been sent to a low level developer
at  ATT  Summit, NJ.  The current reading is that due to schedule
pressures there is little likely-hood of anything  being  adopted
by ATT unless it is part of ANSI C for the next year or so.

It also appears that none of the subscribers to the mailing  list
are  aware  of  changes and directions for recent releases of ATT
software so here is a summary:

1.  The  TZ  environment  is  set  and  maintained  in  the  file
/etc/TIMEZONE  and is a Bourne shell file that can be sourced ( .
/etc/TIMEZONE) by any one who wishes.

2.  Init (/etc/init == process 1) reads and parses this file  and
sets  the  environment  of  all  children  processes  with the TZ
variable.  It is thus propagated through cron, login and su. [And
thus  to  csh  (just for Mark :-) ]. (Feature in System V Release
3.1 and following).

3. The TZ variable has new syntax and fields.  First as sample
	TZ=QST-3:15:25QDT-2:25:12;281/02:00:00,315/01:00:00
This says the offset from GMT  is  3  hours  15  minutes  and  23
seconds;  Alternate  time  starts  on  Julian  day 281 at 2am and
reverts on Julian Day 315 at 1am.  Alternate time is offset  from
GMT  by  2  hours  25 minutes and 12 seconds.  Note negative time
offsets are East of Greenwich and thus -5:00 ougt to be somewhere
in  Russia.  An  example  of  a  Southern  Hemishpere setting for
perhaps the Cook Islands (not to be considered a real thing, just
a  cooked example (no pun):  
	TZ=KDT9:30KST10:00;64/5:00,303/20:00
For TZ strings with no time specified for the change (Julian date
only) the change of time defaults to midnight local time.

4.  If no TZ variable is set or exists default timezone rules are
for GMT.

5.  A new sequences of time functions [setcftime,ascftime,cftime]
allow variable formats for time (similar in concept for the funny
formats for date).
	int cftime(buf, fmt, clock)
	char *buf, *fmt;
	time_t clock;

6.  A variable LANGUAGE is used to specifiy the language  of  the
output  [default  is  ENGLISH  with /lib/cftime/usa_english ] the
default file.  Files in /lib/cftime specify the default names and
abbreviations  of the days and months, as well as default strings
for  date  and  cftime  (Europeans  use  dd/mm/yy  and  USA  uses
mm/dd/yy) and such.

7.  The environment variable CFTIME can be used  to  specify  the
default  format  string for cftime related functions and programs
-- date now uses cftime.

Comments:
The new syntax for TZ allows for any time  zone  rule,  but  only
allows  ONE  change  per year.  The varialbe must be modified and
reset for the year being printed.  Thus is TZ is set for  1987  a
full ctime for a previous year will result in odd information for
a few days each spring and fall (US).

It seems like a trivial change to store a table of  TZ  variables
for each year.  The cftime additions are useful for international
situations but still the TZ rules are a bit parochial.

--
=Dennis L. Mumaugh
 Lisle, IL       ...!{ihnp4,cbosgd,lll-crg}!cuuxb!dlm