[tz] EST/EDT vs AEST/AEDT in AQ [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]
Clive D.W. Feather
clive at davros.org
Mon Apr 15 12:50:54 UTC 2013
Gwillim Law said:
> When I was a data administrator, one of the most fundamental principles I
> learned was not to try to embed one field as a code inside another one.
[...]
> (Some programmers love to think up tricks like that, in order
> to save a line or two of code.) It's just not a good data design. The tz
> database contains a field that's defined as the offset from standard time,
> and it's expressed as a time, not a letter code. Force the programmers to
> use that field. Never suggest that the next-to-last letter can be used
> instead.
Hear, hear.
These abbreviations are there for hysterical raisins (as we used to call
it in my youth). They're already fundamentally broken - trying to add
structure to them is doomed.
--
Clive D.W. Feather | If you lie to the compiler,
Email: clive at davros.org | it will get its revenge.
Web: http://www.davros.org | - Henry Spencer
Mobile: +44 7973 377646
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