Updated Australian time zone names/strings
Robert Elz
kre at munnari.OZ.AU
Sun Apr 22 07:23:19 UTC 2001
Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2001 17:42:08 -0700 (PDT)
From: Paul Eggert <eggert at twinsun.com>
Message-ID: <200104210042.RAA08396 at shade.twinsun.com>
| OK, how about this idea? If TZ='Australia/Sydney:' then use numeric
| abbreviations. The basic idea is to append a suffix that cannot
| possibly be part of a portable POSIX file name.
I guess we could, though I'm not overly enamoured with the "cannot possibly
be part of a portable POSIX file name" part. We should certainly not be
presuming that any such names can be used, and should not be naming zones in
non-portable ways, but if someone decides to name a timezone file
/path/to/EST:EDT (and it happens to work on his system) I'd prefer not to
break things.
Of course, it can be documented that ':' is magic in TZ file names (or
what would otherwise be a TZ file name) but it does seem a bit ugly.
The "alternative" form of TZ setting has more flexibility here, as they're
defining a syntax for the value of the TZ variable which is not just "any
local path name", and hence can shoe horn in almost anything they want.
| Since POSIX is adding
| support for "+1000", it might be nice if the Olson extension added
| similar support.
Yes, the only issue is just how that is made to happen.
kre
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