[tz] tabs vs spaces

[Tobias Conradi]

On Wed, May 1, 2013 at 2:24 PM,  <random832 at fastmail.us> wrote:
> On Wed, May 1, 2013, at 8:08, Tobias Conradi wrote:
>> On Wed, May 1, 2013 at 1:35 PM,  <random832 at fastmail.us> wrote:
>> > Tokens in the timezone files are separated by _any whitespace_.
>> I don't see the word "token" in ftp://ftp.iana.org/tz/code/Theory
>
> It's the plain english meaning of the word.
http://www.wordreference.com/definition/token
lists seven English meanings.

> Theory does not contain a
> specification for the format of these files. And you knew that,
When? And source for that?

> so what
> was the point of making this post?
The plain English meaning of the post.

> Any whitespace is the separation in the format that zic accepts (as
> evidenced by the fact that these lines don't, in fact, break anything),
> I have no idea why people are trying to impose a tab-separated format on
> it,
And because you do not have any idea why, you reject it?

> particularly when they don't have a consistent _number_ of tabs
> regardless (in northamerica alone, there are 455 lines that begin with a
> tab, 9 that have extra tabs at the end, and 7 that have two tabs between
> two fields).
The variable number - I don't know whether it is not consistent - was
a topic on the list before, e.g. for zone.tab:

http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2012-March/017507.html

I don't know about benefits of having a variable number, but if there
is none, it is a benefit to have a constant number, e.g. for opening
files in OpenOffice.

-- 
Tobias Conradi
Rheinsberger Str. 18
10115 Berlin
Germany

http://tobiasconradi.com