[tz] Beginner's help request

[Daniel Ford]

Paul,

Thanks for this, but I actually liked Tim's table better! :-)

Perhaps if I can find somewhere that explains 'POSIX TZ string format', I might begin to understand your table.  I'll have a look around.

PS: I was (before retirement) an embedded systems designer (h/ware + f/ware), with negligible experience in DOS and Windows programming and databases.  DBase IV and CA-Clipper (both in MS-DOS) are as close as I've been to database programming, and even that was adapting someone else's code, not originating it!

Regards,
Daniel



-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Eggert [mailto:eggert at cs.ucla.edu] 
Sent: Sunday, October 15, 2017 1:34 PM
To: Tim Parenti; Daniel Ford
Cc: Time Zone Mailing List
Subject: Re: [tz] Beginner's help request

Tim Parenti wrote:
> For your idea of a text-only table of already-parsed data, you may consider
> the zdump utility that is packaged in the distribution.

It sounds like what's wanted is more a table like this:

Africa/Abidjan	GMT0
Africa/Accra	GMT0
Africa/Algiers	CET-1
Africa/Bissau	GMT0
Africa/Cairo	EET-2
Africa/Casablanca	WET0WEST,M3.5.0,M10.5.0/3
Africa/Ceuta	CET-1CEST,M3.5.0,M10.5.0/3
...

where the first column is the TZ name, and the second is the prediction of the 
future behavior of clocks in the corresponding location, in nearly-POSIX TZ 
string format. We don't distribute a table like that now, though I suppose we 
could generate one automatically from the information that is already there.