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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