Proposed magic number patch
Chris Newman
Chris.Newman at innosoft.com
Tue Oct 7 23:18:11 UTC 1997
On Tue, 7 Oct 1997, John Cowan wrote:
> The following patch adds a "magic number" to compiled zoneinfo
> files. The affected files are zic.c and tzfile.h. In essence,
> the first four bytes of zoneinfo files are set to
> "\0x14\0x1a\0x54\0x5a", which in ASCII is "^T^ZTZ".
> This patch is trivial, but will assist in the automatic
> recognition of zoneinfo files by the Unix "file" command.
Excellent idea, but I'd suggest choosing a magic number based on the
principles outlined in RFC 2083 section 12.11. I propose:
\211 T Z \r \n ^Z \n
as a magic number.
- Chris
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