[tz] [PATCH] Document some longstanding unwritten guidelines.

Paul Eggert eggert at cs.ucla.edu
Tue Sep 3 23:53:46 UTC 2013


These come from POSIX or similar platforms, or from the standard
'zic' implementation, but never got written down anywhere.
* Theory: Document other POSIX-inspired restrictions on names.
* zic.8 (DESCRIPTION): Document that zic's behavior is unspecified
if some names are duplicates.  Sometimes it complains, sometimes not.
---
 Theory | 10 ++++++++--
 zic.8  |  3 +++
 2 files changed, 11 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

diff --git a/Theory b/Theory
index bd62c5c..b11cbc8 100644
--- a/Theory
+++ b/Theory
@@ -299,15 +299,21 @@ Here are the general rules used for choosing location names,
 in decreasing order of importance:
 
 	Use only valid POSIX file name components (i.e., the parts of
-		names other than '/').  Within a file name component,
+		names other than '/').  Do not use the file name
+		components '.' and '..'.  Within a file name component,
 		use only ASCII letters, '.', '-' and '_'.  Do not use
 		digits, as that might create an ambiguity with POSIX
 		TZ strings.  A file name component must not exceed 14
 		characters or start with '-'.  E.g., prefer 'Brunei'
 		to 'Bandar_Seri_Begawan'.
+	A name must not be empty, or contain '//', or start or end with '/'.
 	Do not use names that differ only in case.  Although the reference
-	        implementation is case-sensitive, some other implementations
+		implementation is case-sensitive, some other implementations
 		are not, and they would mishandle names differing only in case.
+	If one name A is an initial prefix of another name AB (ignoring case),
+		then B must not start with '/', as a regular file cannot have
+		the same name as a directory in POSIX.  For example,
+		'America/New_York' precludes 'America/New_York/Bronx'.
 	Uninhabited regions like the North Pole and Bouvet Island
 		do not need locations, since local time is not defined there.
 	If all the clocks in a region have agreed since 1970,
diff --git a/zic.8 b/zic.8
index d61555e..d0d34ce 100644
--- a/zic.8
+++ b/zic.8
@@ -362,6 +362,9 @@ field is used as an alternate name for that zone.
 .PP
 Except for continuation lines,
 lines may appear in any order in the input.
+However, the behavior is unspecified if multiple zone or link lines
+define the same name, or if the source of one link line is the target
+of another.
 .PP
 Lines in the file that describes leap seconds have the following form:
 .nf
-- 
1.8.1.2




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