Proposal for new ISO C 9x time API

[Nathan Myers]

Markus Kuhn writes:
 > Nathan Myers wrote on 1998-09-16 19:10 UTC:
 > > A problem I foresee is that there is no way, given a timezone_t 
 > > object, to retrieve the string used to construct it.  This might best
 > > be another strfxtime directive.
 > 
 > Which would mean that we have to force the implementor to store the
 > original string. Is this really necessary? The user has provided the
 > string himself, so why whould he depend on getting it back later. We
 > certainly could easily add another strfxtime conversion specifier, but I
 > wonder whether this is necessary at all.

Yes, it's necessary.  

You say "the user", but there is not just one user.  Each library 
used in a program may be written independently, and adding interfaces 
to each library to communicate the time zone name around a system 
separately of the time zone itself just adds clutter.

Nathan Myers
ncm at cantrip.org